Never as Good as the First Time
by lankypanky
Summary: Prequel: hopefully short-ish history for Norman Jayden.  Not a lot of action.
1. Chapter 1

When he first put the glasses on, Norman Jayden was supremely unimpressed.

"All right," Carruthers' voice came over the intercom. "Don't move. Keep your right hand in a fist. Now, what do you see?"

Jayden peered around. "The room. The room, and you, through the glass. And is that Jen Conrad off to the side? Hey, Jen." A barely-visible figure waved a hand.

Carruthers frowned at him, hit the intercom button again. "_Describe_ what you see. Be as specific as you can. Where are you, right now?"

Jayden sighed, started again. "I'm sitting in a metal folding chair, in a white room – I'm sorry, a room with two cinderblock and two . . . other walls painted white, dimensions approximately . . . eight feet by ten feet." He looked up. "By eight feet. The floor is white tile. There is a suspended ceiling with one fluorescent light and a speaker in one corner. There is a wood laminate door to my left. I am seated at a grey metal desk, dimensions . . . I feel like an idiot, do I really have to do this?"

"Yes."

"Dimensions maybe five feet by three feet by three feet. On it is a closed petri dish, which appears to be empty. The wall in front of me contains a window, maybe about four foot square. Through the window, I can see the back of a computer monitor, and beyond that, Special Agent Henry Carruthers in a similar room. He is wearing a remarkably ugly tie."

"Enough." Carruthers looked even more deeply irritated, but at least Jayden got to stop the exercise. "Okay. Now, we've got that room pretty clean, but it's hardly sterile. If you feel overwhelmed immediately, I want you to shut your eyes and tell me so. Understand?"

"Got it."

"We'll begin. Recording on. Agent Norman Jayden, number 47023, ARI stress test. Agent Jayden, please tell the ARI you're wearing to turn itself on."

"ARI, turn on," Jayden said obediently, and jerked as a world of images flew quickly through his field of vision. He gasped a little as they faded, and left the world beyond them changed.

"What's just happened?"

Jayden was blinking a little, and began craning his head around curiously. "There was a very brief flash of what looked like information that appeared in front of my eyes, passing by too quickly for me to read," he said. "It's gone now. It was a little startling, but I'm fine. I still see everything I just described, but . . . muted. As though the color were drained out. Watching a color program on a black and white set."

"Good. That's normal. That flash was just your ARI's bootup screen. It was figuring out who you are and whether it was working properly. The color loss is intentional, for contrast; you'll see what that means in a minute. I want you to take the top off that petri dish with your _left_ hand."

Jayden curiously lifted the clear lid and set it aside. "Right, done."

"Now, with your right hand, extend your index finger and tap it against the interior of the dish."

It was even stranger than he'd expected, this whole thing. But he brought up his right hand, cloaked in the ARI glove, and clicked his first finger down into the center of the dish. The universe exploded in front of him, and he jerked back so hard he nearly went over in his chair. His mouth hung open, his eyes widened impossibly, and he fell into unexpected beauty. He watched his new layer of reality spin and flow.

"Agent Jayden! If you don't answer me we'll have to end this!"

"_No!_" he shouted, wondering how many times Carruthers had already called his name. "Don't!" He was lost, so lost, so totally transfixed in that new universe. "Let me look! I'm fine!"

"Describe what you see."

"_Everything_," Jayden said. From the petri dish had sprung beautiful orange blossoms, endless streams of data. He was transfixed.

"Be _specific_."

Oh, Jesus, he wished Carruthers would shut the hell up. "Information. Orange boxes of information linked to things in the dish. I'm . . . trying to . . . it's going too fast." Words and numbers were flowing, jumping.

"How many boxes?"

Jayden blinked. "Five."

"Dammit. Sorry, ignore that, that's a higher amount of contamination than normal. You can use the ARI glove to manipulate that information. Try to touch one of the boxes, the most prominent one, if you can. Do it slowly so you don't get any more input while you're reading it."

Jayden raised his right hand and placed it gently against the box he could see but not feel. Its brightness dimmed a little, and the data slowed to a crawl, then stopped. Intrigued, he cocked his head, zipped the information forwards, backwards, magnified different parts of its contents, sped up the movements to explore it further.

"Can you read what you see now?" Carruthers asked.

Jayden was hardly even processing what the information actually _was_, just that there was so much of it, and so many ways to see it, and so many meanings of it. "Yeah. Yeah, I can see the words."

"Can you tell me what the dish contains? What information do you have there?"

"You _licked_ it," Jayden said in dazzled wonder. "The petri dish. Your saliva's in it. You had toast and orange juice for breakfast. Your wife's name is Isobel."

"You already knew my wife's name," Carruthers said, but Jayden was off and running through endless miles of footnotes and interconnections and backtracks and spirals and loop-the-loops. His right hand flew, spun, stabbed, tore at the words and numbers and molecular chains.

"You went to college at Georgetown. You got a citation for drunk and disorderly when you were twenty but otherwise have a clean criminal record. It has been determined that it is not legally considered a violation of privacy for police to retrieve spit from a sidewalk to analyze its DNA during an investigation. You have been with the FBI for ten years, four months, six days. You used mouthwash this morning. A cursory examination of your saliva indicates that you have not recently used narcotics. Isobel Carruthers teaches high school in Hyattsville. The DNA in saliva comes from cells shed from the inner lining of the cheek. You live at 85 Garner Street in Baltimore, Maryland."

"Stop. Agent Jayden, shut your eyes."

"No! I can see _everything_. It's all here!"

"_Slow down_. I will hit the panic button if you don't slow down. Close your hand or it's over."

That was an acceptable compromise, in that it let him keep his eyes open. He made a fist in the air so Carruthers could see it, but Jayden's eyes kept looking and looking and looking at the information still hovering, pulsing, in front of his face. His heart beat high and fast, and he had a deep, wild, sudden conviction that one of life's great mysteries had just opened to him.

He'd heard other people talk about this, but he'd never understood before now, never quite got it into his head what they were talking about. He got it, now. He understood it in his brain and his mouth and his heart and his belly and his balls.

For the first time in his life, Norman Jayden was in _love_. He panted with pleasure.

"You're breathing pretty fast in there, Agent Jayden. How do you feel?" Carruthers' voice came filtering into his ears; Jayden could just make out the dim face of the man himself beyond his worlds of information, but it wasn't very interesting, in comparison to the ways in which he could see Carruthers as an amalgamation of data.

He couldn't say the truth, of course, but he got pretty close: "_Amazed_."

"Keep your hand closed. Does the room look the same?"

He glanced around briefly, hating to tear his glance away from his infatuation. "Yes."

"Any discomfort?"

"No." Jayden didn't think so, anyway, but he wasn't paying much attention to anything beyond those still-hovering boxes.

"All right. Stop as soon as you feel any. Out of curiosity, can you tell me what the other four boxes indicate is also in the dish?"

Jayden flew back into action and stroked the floating boxes; each lovely flower faded a little bit at his touch, as though he were frost stalking through a garden. "Nicotine remnant. Alconox detergent. Cloth fiber, cotton. Eyelash from Christine Walker, a laboratory technician employed at the FBI Headquarters in –"

"Stop again. Hand closed. Still all right?"

"_Yes_." Jayden obediently clenched his fist, but he was burning with impatience. "I want _more_."

There was a long pause, and Jayden let his eyes flicker back beyond the window. Carruthers and Conrad seemed to be having some sort of animated discussion, which he wished they would _hurry the fuck up_ with.

Finally, Carruthers' voice came back over the intercom. "Does your environment look the same to you?"

Jayden was just about ready to go through the window at him in impatience, sink his teeth in the other' man's throat; he checked the room in two seconds flat. "Fine. Perfect."

"All right, we'll try this. Back up your chair a little." Jayden scraped backwards across the tile. "Now, very gently, spread your whole right hand and flick your wrist at the floor in front of you, and see what you get."

And with that, Jayden was _in_ the information. It was all around him, a swamp of waving cattails, a quagmire of data he could easily drown in. He gasped again, not giving himself time to recover before he started pouncing in growing excitement at his new prizes. He practically _was_ the information, now.

"_Agent Jayden, stop_." He was getting used to the request now, made the fist. "Are you aware of what you're doing? What are you doing, right now?"

"Looking at the floor." He tried frantically to determine just how specific he was being asked to be. "The data on the floor. Taking the ARI test."

"You're rocking very quickly in your chair and I'm afraid you're going to tip over. I'd also like you to slow down your breathing a little."

Jayden was simultaneously startled and annoyed by the request, but became aware of his metronomic body movement as soon as Carruthers mentioned it. "Okay, no," he said. "I didn't know." He made himself slow down, be still, but that excited motion had to go _somewhere_, and he started shaking his head, instead.

The other man was continuing: "You look distressed. Like you're trying to say 'no.' Is something wrong?"

It was so hard to explain what he was feeling. "No, but I know where the janitor lives."

Carruthers' voice let Jayden keep poking, digging into every bit of trivia he could find about the floor – who'd made the tile, what kind of cleaner had been used most recently, what traces Jayden himself had left on it from the soles of his shoes.

"Can I get up?" Jayden asked hopefully. "I want to see what else there is."

"Okay, you can explore a little bit if you want to," Carruthers said, cautiously. "But go slow."

Every inch of the room was a universe. And Carruthers' voice let him keep going as long as Jayden kept answering. He learned things he'd never known he didn't know about how everything fit together, about paint, about dirt, about the oils left behind by human skin, and it was all part of his vast new love affair with the kind of world ARI had shown him it could give him.

He explored forever.

Out of nowhere, his body convulsed. And then, Jayden's world exploded in absolute pain, absolute overload, shortout, whiteout, a million voices screaming directly inside his head, and then he didn't know anything for a while.


	2. Chapter 2

It was blinding again when he started to wake up. _Incredibly_ blinding. He blinked, painfully.

"Agent Jayden? Shit. Norman, Norman, say something if you can." It was blinding because someone was shining a light directly into his fucking eyes.

"Stop it," he said, trying to turn his head away. "Jesus."

Thankfully, it stopped, and Jayden started trying to squint past the fading retinal burn the light had left. It was what's-her-face. Agent Conrad. The medic. Something bad had happened to him.

"How do you feel?" Conrad was asking.

Jayden kept blinking, started taking a personal survey. "Confused," he admitted. "My head hurts. Headache. I'm tired. I think . . . I think okay, otherwise."

She looked furiously at something that wasn't him, and let go of Jayden's wrist, which he hadn't realized was being held until then. "You left him in there too _long_."

"It's a stress test. Almost everyone gets left in there too long. That's the point of having a stress test." That was Carruthers. Jayden craned his neck to look at the other man, who seemed very, very tall, realized he himself was lying on a floor.

"You could have figured out whether he was suitable after the first five minutes," Conrad retorted, fiddling with something out of view.

"What happened?" Jayden asked. "Jesus, what _smells_?"

Conrad looked back at him, pressing her lips together sympathetically. "You vomited. You've got some of it on you. Just stay there, I'm going to wipe off what I can. Can you focus your eyes? Know where you are?"

"Yeah, I can see okay. I'm . . . the ARI test. That was today. I'm in the test room." Things were coming back a little, and he recognized that ceiling. "With the fluorescent light. And the speaker. I remember them." Conrad, scrubbing at him, looked relieved.

"Are there any significant changes in the room that you can see?" Carruthers asked.

Jayden squinted around. "Well, it's hard to tell from here, but I don't think so. Aside from you two being in here. And the mess I made, I guess. Can I sit up? Looking directly into the light up there is murder on my head right now."

Conrad considered. "Yeah, okay, let's see if you're dizzy. Watch out for the puke, there, I'll keep you out of it."

Jayden wasn't dizzy, but the shift in position did make him realize just how tired he was. He reached out for the handi-wipe Conrad was using. "I'll do that," he said. She handed him a few fresh ones, and he grimaced as he looked down at the front of his suit, started dabbing at the spots he could see. "What happened?" he asked again.

"Your turn, Agent Carruthers." Conrad was once again looking up at the other man.

Carruthers sighed. "You were responding really well to the ARI. _Really_ well. I probably should have cut you off, but you were so intent on continuing that I just sort of let you do it. What's the last thing you remember?"

Jayden shuddered. ". . . too much. Too much everything, all at once."

Carruthers nodded. "I think you probably got motion sickness. It happens to a lot of people moving while using ARI until they get used to it. There's a disconnect between what your brain is experiencing and what your body is feeling, including your inner ear. Can produce intense nausea. You were concentrating so hard I don't think you noticed your body was uncomfortable."

Jayden frowned. "I've never had motion sickness hit me in the brain with a lead pipe before."

"Yeah, well, you were never using ARI before. There's a reason we do this in a tiny, mostly-clean room."

"It's _not_ clean. It's _packed _with stuff."

"Well, right, but cleaner than most environments. When you work with the ARI for a while, you learn how to filter out about ninety-nine percent of that information through programming the ARI itself and using your training. Right now, you can't, so you can see everything possible in this room. Imagine doing the stress test in . . . okay, in a public restroom."

Jayden shuddered involuntarily, thinking of all of those surfaces touched by all of those people, all of the fluids, the fibers, the chemical cleaning supplies, the dead insects, the hairs, the footprints. "Oh, god," he said.

"Exactly. You'd fry your head. So _you_ were doing pretty well in here, and then you got motion sickness, and you puked right on the glove."

"Oh, Jesus, I'm sorry." Jayden wondered if he'd have to pay for a new one.

"Don't worry about it. Kinds of things it has to touch, it wouldn't be much good if it couldn't be cleaned. Anyway, it was too much. Too much new information. Your brain shut down trying to process everything ARI was giving you."

". . . I made myself pass out with my own vomit?"

"Yeah, looks like it. You got everything you'd ever need to know about your stomach acid, bile, plus whatever it was you'd eaten in various stages of digestion, _plus_ your entire personal history, plus what you were already looking at, etcetera, all at once."

Jayden stared at him. "I research serial killers, and that is still one of the most disgusting things I have ever heard."

"It's pretty bad, yeah. You keep working with ARI, you'll find out there's worse."

Conrad had been considering Jayden narrowly. "How do you feel about trying to get up?" she asked.

"Pretty hopeful, but then I think I'd like to lie back down for a while." He blinked at her. "Preferably not in a puddle of vomit. I'm totally exhausted."

She nodded understandingly. "I'm not surprised. You're _not_," Conrad shot Carruthers yet another glare, "Supposed to go in for half an hour your first time. You deserve a nap."

Carruthers glared back. "I need to see how much of the information he retained, or this has all been wasted."

Jayden rubbed his face. "Can I at least go clean myself up in the bathroom while you two fight over it?"

They helped him up, and Carruthers escorted him to the restroom in case he had a delayed reaction, despite Jayden's protests that he felt pretty good. Ultimately, he mostly made everyone happy, though he nearly fell asleep sitting up towards the end of Carruthers' post-test interview, and his concentration wasn't the best. Conrad gave him some aspirin and let him pass out on a cot while she checked him over once more. Jayden woke on his own a while later and stared at the ceiling. He felt now like he was relaxing in a sort of post-coital bliss. He regarded the ceiling lazily for a while, feeling the tiny aftershocks of pleasure from knowing how much he knew now about the world, about how it was put together. Conrad was on him like a vulture as soon as she saw him move; it was just the two of them in a tiny room. She released him after his vitals read well.

"All right," she said. "But take it easy. If anything feels strange to you, tell someone _immediately_. Get sleep and drink water."

On the way back to his office, Jayden started fidgeting, decided he had to know, tracked down Carruthers again. The examiner was back in his usual office, tapping his way through data.

"Am I in?" Jayden demanded.

Carruthers jerked, visibly startled. "Jeez, I thought you'd sleep longer. Uh. Well, look, Agent Jayden. You know all I do is run the tests and pass on results. But . . . unofficially?" He nodded. "They'd have to be crazy not to. You'll probably hear before the weekend. If not by then, Monday. All right?"

That seemed like an eternity. "Thanks, Henry."

Jayden went back to his desk. Most of his work right now was going through old files, old cases, old murders, some of them _very_ old, as far back as they could trust the records to be reliable. He picked through the documents they contained and fed the important parts into the various relevant databases, exposing similarities, creating portraits of people who'd done terrible, terrible things. He lived at all times in the world of information that flew from the hard copies before him through his fingertips and into the rows upon rows of information on his screen. He felt sometimes like a glorified data entry clerk, but the praise he received from his superiors for his ability to retain, analyze, and project information patterns helped make up for it. Tell Jayden a crime, he'd already be halfway through telling you what he could about the criminal, and he was usually right. Unfortunately, he'd gotten a little _too_ good at it, and he hardly ever got sent out on field work, a problem which chafed at him.

If he got into the ARI program, though, that was going to change. It had to. Someone who was as good as he was at data analysis was too valuable back here to send out into the field, but someone who was good at ARI would be too valuable to keep in an office all day. And hardly anyone was good at ARI, yet, because hardly anyone was _in_ the ARI program. It was brand new. It only appealed to a handful of those eligible, a lot of them failed the stress test – there were rumors about the kinds of things that had happened – and some of those left over didn't make it through the subsequent training.

Jayden had already decided that he was going to be very, _very_ good at working with ARI. All he needed was a chance.

His headache was lingering, still, and it took him a few moments to realize there was an extra shadow hovering over his desk: Special Agent Andrew Miller was perching on one end of it with some confidence.

Jayden straightened immediately. Miller was one of the guys already _in _the ARI program. He barely knew the man beyond that, just that he mostly worked cases involving drugs and organized crime, did a lot of liaison work with the DEA, and was fairly easygoing.

"I'm sorry, Special Agent Miller," Jayden said. He immediately wanted to kick himself; it sounded, even to his ears, as though he were sucking up, but he so badly wanted any information at all about the ARI. "Didn't see you. Can I help you with something?"

"So you had your test today," Miller squinted at him. "How'd it go?"

Jayden let himself break into the tiny smile that was his own version of celebration, looked back down at his keyboard. "Carruthers said I did well," he responded shyly. The smile grew a little wider. "That it'd be crazy if I didn't get in."

"Yeah?" Miller's interest seemed piqued. "Listen, how did _yours_ end?" He dropped his voice, leaned in to whisper: "I had to quit because the room disappeared and just the data stayed behind."

Apparently, Jayden had joined a club now, one he hadn't known existed: veterans of the ARI stress test. "I threw up on the glove," he admitted, ruefully.

Miller looked horrified. "While you were still in ARI for the first time?"

It was nice to be talking to someone who understood how terrible it had been. "Yeah."

"Hell, I'm surprised they didn't send you home. With a nurse."

Jayden shrugged. "I think Jen Conrad said I could go if I wanted, but I feel okay now. And I still had these Copeland documents to enter, so it just seemed easier to stay."

"Boy, you _must_ have done pretty well, then. How long were you in there?"

Jayden tried to remember what had been said. "I guess about half an hour."

Miller laughed. "Yeah, I know that's what it seems like, but how long really?"

Jayden squinted at him, puzzled. "Really. Conrad said half an hour. She was pretty pissed off about it."

"Je_sus_." Miller looked wary. "If you're not blowing smoke up my ass, that's the new record. I mean, I can just barely do that _now_."

"What was the old record?" Jayden was, despite himself, starting to get excited.

"Luke Rogers did twelve minutes before he had a seizure."

". . . shit."

"Yeah." Miller had cocked his head now. "You're _sure_ about the time? Sometimes people can get a little screwed up."

"That's what they said," Jayden assured him. "I had to sleep for a while afterwards and everything. And, you know . . . I _did_ throw up."

"Still unreal." Miller was staring at his toes. "Huh. Well, look, you'll hear back before I will, about what the Powers That Be think. But . . . I mean, you know what it's like, now. What it takes. So I'll just say good luck and I'll see you when I see you."

"Sure." Jayden tried to suppress his rising smugness: apparently, he was already good. It was easy to love things you were good at; he knew that, already. But this felt different. He was having to consciously suppress his desire to go harass Carruthers again. He wanted to become the information so badly that his joints were tingling.

Ultimately, he went home, had trouble getting to sleep because he was so busy trying to see it all again in his mind's eye.


	3. Chapter 3

By Friday, the wait for a response had begun to chafe Jayden badly, and he found himself snapping more and more at his colleagues. He began trying to hold his breath before he answered anyone's questions, sometimes just grunting at them through clenched teeth. But when he opened his email that morning, there they were: instructions to report to Carruthers' office for further information. He nearly flew there. Thankfully, the examiner wasn't busy with anything or anyone else when he got there – neither Jayden's nerves nor Carruthers' door probably could have taken the strain. He skidded to a stop in front of the office's lone desk, breath whistling through his nose.

"Jesus, Norman." Carruthers had jerked upright at his entrance, startled, was now staring at him incredulously. "Calm down. You're in. You're freaking me out a little, but you're still in."

Excitement rising in his stomach, Jayden filled his lungs and let out a long, long exhalation that he puffed out through pursed lips. "When do I start?"

Carruthers' mouth quirked up a little at the other man's uncharacteristic enthusiasm. "Take a seat. Let me grab a few things and I'll talk you through the next steps. You might be a little disappointed – the training starts out pretty slow."

Jayden obediently slipped into a chair. "That's okay. I wasn't expecting assignments right away or anything. And I certainly don't want a repeat of the end of the test."

"Good. If you can be patient as you learn, this'll work out better for everyone." Carruthers fussed at his keyboard, then pulled out a slim file folder and a small box. "Usually, Director Fletcher would be here to do this, too, but he's out of town, so it's just me. His job is mostly to tell you just how much trouble you'll be in if you don't follow protocol. You will, in fact, be in unbelievable amounts of trouble if you don't. Confidentially, you're not missing much with him being gone; I don't think he really understands that much of the whole thing. Don't, uh, don't repeat that."

Jayden nodded. "I got it. 'Don't screw up.' I can handle that."

"All right," Carruthers said, and handed Jayden the box. "Your ARI should be yours, just yours. It's like your new partner. Don't trade. This is yours. You only use it under supervision until you get told otherwise, right?"

Jayden opened the box reverently; inside were a pair of ARI glasses and a glove. His mouth went dry. "Right," he croaked.

"You've met before. That's the set you did your stress test with. You two got along so well it seemed like a good idea to keep you working together. Also it seemed a little unfair to make anyone else do the test in a glove you threw up on. Though we _did_ clean it."

"It's perfect," Jayden said, and he meant it. "Great." He wanted to put it on just to feel it, not even to use it, just for the security of knowing that he was _going_ to be able to use it again, and he could already tell he'd be wrestling with some terrible temptation when he took it home.

"Dang," Carruthers shook his head at him. "You all get the same look on your face when you get your own. Like it's a cross between your new best friend and your new baby. It must be something else to be in there."

"Have you never used one?" Jayden asked curiously. He was running his fingers over the glove, mentally apologizing to it for having accidentally abused it the first time they'd met.

"Not _this_ little black duck, no way. I've seen simulations and recordings to help me run the exam, so that I more or less know what you all see when you use it, but I've never put one on."

"Why not?"

Carruthers snorted. "Seriously? I've administered all the stress tests. All of them. Asking me that question is like . . . asking me why I don't play Russian roulette."

"Can you tell me about the bad ones? The failures?" Jayden made himself close the lid on his new ARI.

Carruthers was frowning now. "No."

"Why not? Shouldn't I know the worst that can happen?" He ran his fingers around and around the box.

"Because what happens to everyone during their tests is private information. Would you want me running around telling everyone you puked on yourself and then hung out in it for a while?" Jayden winced. "Anyway, I've seen those training sessions you've got to go to. Not _only_ will everyone immediately tell you what happened to them during their tests, you'll almost certainly see a couple of freakouts in training, maybe have a few of your own. Don't worry, you'll hear enough horror stories."

Jayden's previous conversation with Miller already made part of that ring true. "All right, I'm sorry for asking," he admitted. "What else is there?"

Carruthers handed him a copy of the training schedule, reminded him that he wasn't supposed to talk about what he was doing unless given specific clearance, then paused. "Listen," he said hesitantly, "I want to show you something. Come around behind me." Jayden moved to watch the computer screen over his shoulder as Carruthers pulled up a video file. "I've turned off the volume, because what we were saying doesn't really matter. Just watch this."

Jayden peered, puzzled. It was a video of himself during his test, chair pushed back from the table, fondling the air in front of him, mouth agape. He looked slightly foolish. "Okay, what about it?"

"Hold on. You're just about to get out of your chair." The two men watched in silence.

The Norman Jayden on the screen spread his legs wide, jammed his ungloved left hand down onto the table, and lurched unsteadily out of his chair like he was on board a storm-tossed boat. Current Jayden watched in embarrassment as Past Jayden swayed on his feet, fell heavily against a wall, and pushed his way slowly along it with his ARI-gloved right hand questing slowly in front of him. Past Jayden wobbled unsteadily along that wall like a toddler. A _drunk_ toddler. A _blind_, drunk toddler. A blind, blind drunk toddler. After a minute or so, Carruthers hit the pause button and looked at Current Jayden with a tense smile.

Jayden scowled at him; he was afraid he was blushing. "I'm glad you think it's so funny. Thanks for sharing."

"That's not why I showed it to you," the other man sighed. "Most people don't ever get out of the chair during the test, so if they need it, they don't hear anything like this until much later, during training. You don't seriously think you could go scan a crime scene like that, do you?"

". . . no."

"So it's just something to be aware of. Everyone's got their own little things they have to work on, different things for different people. Between the way you were moving and the fact that you didn't realize you were nauseated, that's something you should focus on – paying more attention to your body while you're using ARI. It can be dangerous if you don't, if you don't realize you're in pain or falling over or something. I think some of the people in the program do yoga or something to practice stability. You can ask the instructor about it, he'll know better than I. I'm trying to be _helpful_, Norman. This way, you have an idea what the problem is."

"Okay," Jayden responded, chagrined. "Sorry. Thanks. I'm glad you showed me." Carruthers' face looked strained, and Jayden took a few seconds to figure out why, then gave him a small smile. "Also, it _is_ pretty funny."

Carruthers exploded into the laughter he'd been holding back. "You look like the world's worst _mime_," he said.

Jayden's smile got a little bigger. "Night of the Living Dead FBI."

Carruthers laughed until he hiccoughed. "Oh, Jesus," he said, wiping at his eyes. "I'm sorry. So unprofessional. Want to see the part where you rubbed your face on the wall?"

"Ah, no, I'm good." Jayden was embarrassed again. "I understand now. Thanks, Henry." He fled.

He put the box on the corner of his desk, was trying not to stare at it when Miller came back.

"Looks like you got in." Stocky little Miller was flashing him a black Irish grin the size of Montana. "I assumed you would. You afraid yet? You probably should be."

"A little." Jayden restrained himself from actively reaching out to touch the box, reassure himself that it was still there. "Carruthers wouldn't give me a worst-case scenario. Do you, uh." He couldn't finish the sentence.

"You know, if you just come in for training, you'll have a much better picture." It was frustratingly close to Carruthers' response. "Don't put it on in the meantime – I bet you sure want to. Just come see what we're all doing in the program. I do things with chemistry you wouldn't _believe_. But you should meet everyone." Miller vanished like ghost, and Jayden stayed at his desk, chewing at his lips.

His first training session was the next day, and he genuinely agonized over what to do with the glasses and glove in the meantime. If he took them home, he was afraid he would use them. If he left them in his desk, he was afraid they would disappear. He ultimately brought them home and locked them up for the night – he kept his Glock secured in a small gun safe when it came home with him, and the ARI gear was so small that it squeezed in there pretty well. The symbolic act of turning the key in the lock helped a lot to keep him away from it, keep him thinking of it as something off-limits, taboo.

He still twitched a little, thinking about how present it was. But it was manageable. Just another day.


	4. Chapter 4

Training was extra time; Jayden and everyone else had to come in on Saturdays. It was strangely organized – there were so few people involved that they all met at once under the same instructor, Special Agent Eric Belasco, a gawky man about Jayden's own age whose long limbs and prominent Adam's apple made him look something like a red-headed Ichabod Crane. He was a rare exception – a skilled ARI user who almost never left DC, because the Bureau needed him there for the training. There was a medic present as well, just in case, who mostly read magazines with his feet up on a desk.

It was a bit like an old-fashioned one-room schoolhouse: Everyone was at a different stage in terms of skill and tolerance level in terms of working with the ARI, and so Belasco mostly set them all up with their own individual projects and schedules, then came around to answer questions and solve problems. Two of the more senior agents in the program got to go off in a corner by themselves and appeared to be screwing around excessively, laughing. There was a small blonde woman whose main activity seemed to be harassing everyone else while she had her glasses on and they had theirs off. Miller gave Jayden a little wave, then slouched into a seat in front of a desktop computer. Other trainees were assigned boxes of items or corners of the room to work through.

Jayden himself was put into a tiny, empty cubicle – carefully cleaned – and set to work learning how to set filters on his own ARI. Belasco tapped him on the shoulder every ten minutes and made him take a long break; everyone seemed to have their own scheduled time limitations that Belasco policed. Jayden looked around curiously; Miller wasn't actually looking at the screen of the computer in front of him, but groping at it with his gloved hand, his head tilting backwards. There were a few trainees rummaging in cardboard boxes. Other people were wandering serenely through the room, and Jayden envied their easy movement. The tiny woman pounced on Jayden as he rubbed his eyes.

"You're Norman Jayden, right? Joanna Croyden. Gonna scan you," she said as preamble, and began feeling at his face with her own gloved hand.

It obviously wasn't really a request, but he answered it anyway, trying not to flinch away from her: "Okay."

"Trying to build my ARI into being a medical examiner," she said swiftly, even looking vaguely apologetic as she patted next at his chest. "Got to show I can deal with living bodies, under supervision, before Belasco lets me go play with corpses any more."

". . . okay." She made a disapproving face as she trailed her fingers along his knee.

"You ever hurt this knee?"

"Tore it up pretty bad once," he admitted, impressed. "You can tell that?"

"It's saying you don't _have_ a knee there," she grumbled, and abruptly left to fuss with the settings on her glasses.

Jayden found his programming assignment tedious after having anticipated all week being able to wander around and sample the world through his ARI again. By the end of the session, though, Belasco was satisfied with the way Jayden had managed to figure out how to pick up only fingerprints, or hair samples, or footprints, then figure out which databases to poke around in, and Jayden got to toy around with some materials in the inside of his cubicle, feel that beauty rise again around him.

"Good," Belasco said. "You've got the basics down. What you're going to do next week is work with combinations of materials, and then building elements of how you store and access information virtually. If you get through all that without a disaster, you can start experimenting at home. You'll have a schedule to stick to, though."

"What are _they_ doing?" Jayden asked curiously, nodding at the pair in the corner. One of the two men was laughing so hard he looked like he was almost in tears, the other was grinning and flailing wildly at the air.

"Hell if I know at the moment, but in theory, they're supposed to be testing the limits and sustainability of having a shared ARI experience. They started trying it on their own, and Craig there had tremors for three days, so now they have to do it here. If they're still being jackasses next week, I'm going to make them help teach, instead."

The session drew to a close. Carruthers had been right, about everyone wanting to share. As soon as the official training time was over, as they all got ready to leave, the gathering turned into a gossip pit that reminded Jayden of high school. Almost everyone lingered. Thanks to Miller, everyone had already heard of Jayden's vomit and half-hour stress test, and wanted to see if it were true. He shyly assured them that it was, and everyone started bombarding him with their own stories of surviving the test, and others'.

Miller had his disappearing room, and Rogers, his seizure. But there was also the story of a data screen that grew to the size of a football field, several fainting fits and overwhelming headaches, bloody noses, temporary blindness, severe vertigo, and a few other hallucinations, like the ceiling abruptly dropping down on Jackson. Fisher had fallen out of his chair when an imaginary swarm of bees suddenly surrounded him. Carruthers had played the same saliva trick on a few of them, and, during her test, Croyden had seen the examiner's ghostly image swell right up out of the petri dish like a genie out of a bottle, whereupon she'd tried to slap it in anger, thinking he was doing it on purpose. Even Belasco had his story: he'd seen himself turn into nothing but data, but couldn't control his body well enough to take the glasses off, had to be rescued from oblivion. A few lucky ones had managed to shut their eyes when they felt disaster approaching, but a lot hadn't, and Jayden felt a new respect for Carruthers' fussiness and anxiety over the process. He shook his head at the whole thing.

"And wait," Jayden said, "We're the ones who _passed_?"

A few faces fell. "Yeah," Fisher said. He was a slight man with goggling eyes. "There's been a couple of heart attacks, some more serious health stuff. Couple of real mental problems that didn't stop when the glasses came off. And some people who went through the same stuff we did, and just decided it wasn't for them, you know?"

"Pussies," said Miller.

Croyden snorted. "Oh, because you're special. You were screaming for your _mom_ about three weeks ago, Miller. When –"

"Stop," Belasco scolded her. "Play nice. You people are such animals sometimes that I can't believe I'm teaching adults. She's right, though, Andy – you know it's hard to do what we do. There's no shame in people recognizing their limitations."

"It gets better," Craig told Jayden. "It really does. The ARI just changes the way you do _everything_. So much stuff becomes possible. You're your own walking crime lab." There was a general nodding of heads. "Remember, not everyone who's using it is here today. There are some people who don't have to come back and do the training any more, this is just those of us who are learning new things. Jackson," Craig nodded at the man he'd been goofing off with, "And I, we hadn't been here in ages before we started experimenting and . . . had to come back."

Belasco cleared his throat. "He already knows you learned the hard way, Craig. Couldn't stop shaking. If anything, you should emphasize that, so he doesn't get any ideas about striking out on his own without help."

"Nothing happened to Jackson," Craig said defensively. "Anyway, it gets better."

"It's already better," Jayden blurted awkwardly. He didn't know how to say it. "This is better than anything I've ever done." They all smiled. They understood.

Miller walked out to the parking lot with him. "Listen," Miller said. "Belasco's great, really knows his shit. What you're mostly going to need him for isn't the programming stuff, though he's good at that. What you really need him to teach you is how to _see_. Just the filters on the ARI itself aren't enough; the ARI will still show you, say, every single fingerprint in a room, including partials and repetitions, and you just sort of have to let it. Belasco can give you tricks that let you just focus on the ones you need, the ones that'll help. Some of it is stuff you can jury-rig ARI to do for you, but some of it, you need to learn to do yourself while you're using it at a scene. Ask him about that as soon as you can. That's what the real training is."

Jayden, unlocking his car, was deeply appreciative. "Thanks for the tip. Damn, I can't wait until I can practice some of this at home."

"Yeah, I remember that stage. Frustrating." Miller hesitated. "Listen. This was an unusually good week, and I want you to know that. Last week, Fisher completely shorted out and ran into a wall trying to get away from those bees of his. I guess he has a thing about bees. And there were a couple of bloody noses. There's still side effects from ARI, especially if you're not careful. Belasco will tell you that the best thing you can do about that is limit your time and cut yourself off, and he's probably right. I think that's his real gift; the guy has self-control like you wouldn't believe. He'll give you some other tips, too. You're apparently some sort of prodigy, so maybe it won't be an issue for you. But if you start getting side effects and the training's not helping, come talk to me, okay? There's some . . . unofficial things you can do, too. Stuff Belasco doesn't know, because he's never had to know. But I don't want to get into it if it's not a problem for you."

"Okay." Jayden was slightly mystified. "Thanks again. I'll keep that in mind." He felt good about the day, felt a growing pleasure at having acquired Miller as an unofficial mentor.

The following week at work was tedious. Jayden began spending all of his spare time picturing just what he was going to do the next time he was in ARI: in the shower, over lunch, after work. Flirting with temptation, he'd even slip on the glove when he was in bed, close his eyes, and go through the motions, could already anticipate the way that the programming was going to function when he could go in there again.

* * *

**A/N:** Oh, God, not the bees!


	5. Chapter 5

The next training session was, as Miller had nearly promised, worse than Jayden's first.

Not for Jayden himself; he was quietly delighted whenever Belasco let him roam through the scanty forensic evidence inside his cubicle. He was still programming, still doing very dry, boring work, but his time limits had been generously expanded, and once he got going, Jayden was able to blow through a lot of progress at a stretch. He started being able to grind through the different settings he was working into his ARI until he'd exhausted the potential of his tiny assigned space, and Belasco tossed a cardboard file box of miscellaneous items in front of him to let him make sure he'd really figured out how to adjust his searches appropriately. The box had photographs, clothing, silverware – unclassifiable diversity – and Jayden quickly found that he had to carefully isolate each item to "read" it, because, together, they were a hopeless jumble.

"Good," Belasco congratulated him, after Jayden had figured out what kind of food a particular fork had last been used to eat. "You're going _fast_. Start working maybe a little bit with clothing fibers, and if you're still doing well later, I'll get you into constructing your ARI interface."

Jayden was on one of his enforced breaks when Luke Rogers stiffened, jerking out of his chair, and began seizing on the floor; the glasses slipped off Rogers' face in the process. The medic had to put down his magazine in a hurry. The seizure didn't last long – only about thirty seconds – and Belasco trotted around the room pulling everyone else out of their private worlds, while the medic called for additional personnel. There wasn't much for the rest of the group to do but sit and watch the EMT and the instructor gently try to reorient the man on the floor. Rogers wasn't making any sense, was peering at Belasco fearfully as the gangly man tried to ask him how he felt. Eventually, paramedics arrived, but Rogers was still only semi-coherent as he was worked onto a stretcher and carted off for examination.

Then everyone had to wait until there was another EMT available, because regulations said they weren't allowed to train without someone with at least that level of medical certification. Craig and Jackson bitched about the interruption of their virtual checkers game, and Croyden grumped so loudly about not having been able to scan Rogers during his seizure that Belasco finally told everyone to go take lunch and have some goddamned sympathy for Luke, for Christ's sake. Jayden had been fuming silently over his own interrupted, frantic clawing through his limited time, but now felt a rush of guilt. He hadn't cared, either, about whether Luke Rogers would recover, just wanted more time to dig himself into ARI. But he _should_ have cared, and he knew it.

Just after the lunch announcement, Miller, who was quickly becoming Jayden's new confidant, grabbed him by the elbow. "Come on," the dark little chemical expert said. "I guarantee this is going to be a stupid long break, and putzing around with ARI like this always leaves me starved."

About half of the group ended up at the same nearby sandwich place, clustered in their own little pods, and Miller bent Jayden's ear over a pair of subs.

"That was pretty rough," Miller started. "Not the worst week ever, but Luke has maybe the scariest reactions of anyone, when he uses too much."

Jayden toyed with a few shreds of lettuce before he decided that he wanted to ask the question: "What happens to you? When it goes bad?"

Miller squinted at him carefully. "Just between you and me?"

"Well, Christ, of course." Jayden already felt a little uncomfortable. "I just want to know how bad it can get and what you do about it."

"I totally can't see anything around me. Like, the whole _world_ disappears, but I've still got all the ARI readings, like it's for an invisible world. I can tell when it's coming, usually. The data just get brighter and brighter, and the world gets darker. That's when I take the glasses off. The first time it happened during training, I completely lost my shit and apparently screamed for five minutes. I sort of woke up with Belasco holding me and rubbing my back like he was my fucking mother. Croyden says she recorded the whole thing on her ARI to blackmail me with later, but I think even she's not enough of a bitch for that to actually be true. _She_ starts talking to people who aren't there when she goes off the deep end, incidentally."

"So that's all you do? Just take it off?"

"Sometimes I don't stop. Not soon enough. And that's when I end up panicking on the floor. It's a weird feeling - like, part of my brain knows exactly what's happening, that I'm just hallucinating and I should just wait it out, but the rest of it won't stop being terrified. It helps after you know what to expect. And you can sort of cheat a little to make yourself not hurt afterwards, if that happens. But hopefully you won't have to worry about it."

"Cheat?"

Miller rolled his eyes. "Seriously. Don't worry about it too much before it actually happens. We should probably head back, anyway."

Back at training, the instructor explained that Jayden was going to have to figure out a way to organize all of the information he was accumulating. "Think of it this way," Belasco said. "You haven't been using ARI very long, so it might seem like the data is all manageable, but I guarantee you that you will end up with it being so entirely full of stuff that you won't be able to manage it unless you figure out a way to organize it. Store it. Just figure out a way you'd like to be able to access your data, and use the 'Construct' menu to start building it."

It felt like yet another painfully dull assignment, and Jayden took the path of least resistance; he simply rebuilt an exact ARI replica of the battered filing cabinet that sat next to his desk in his usual office. Hopefully, if he did it quickly enough, Belasco would let him move on to the _really_ good stuff. It still took forever to sort all of the information into categories.

"I think I'm done," he said as soon as he felt the next tap on his shoulder that signified his break. He was lying a _little_ – he'd jammed a few things into virtual file folders that didn't belong together – but not that much.

"Okay," Belasco said. "I've got to go help Andy deal with some nonsense, but I'll be right back to check."

_Some nonsense_ took forever, and Jayden was nearly groaning with impatience by the time Belasco came back and held out his hand. "Okay, hand me your ARI, and let's see what you've got."

Jayden reflexively jerked his glasses towards his chest, protectively, and immediately felt slightly foolish. "But . . . we're not supposed to . . . Carruthers said no trading." He felt even more childish when the other man grinned.

"Good job remembering. We're _not_ supposed to. Wearing an ARI that's not fitted to anyone in particular is one thing – that's how we do the stress test. Wearing an ARI that's been adjusted specifically to somebody else . . . well, the program found out pretty quickly that there can be unfortunate results if you're in there long enough. It's okay for a _little_ bit. I do it more than anyone else, I'd say, for obvious reasons, and I try to get in and out pretty quick. I . . ." Belasco gave a long pause, continued with a subdued tone. "I got so lost in someone else's ARI once that I couldn't remember my name for _hours_. I stuttered a little for two weeks afterward. My fine motor control was shot. Scared the hell out of my kids. I mean, it scared me, too, obviously, but they really had a hard time understanding why their dad was suddenly so screwed up that Mom had to help him cut up his food sometimes. And that is why I am now very, _very_ careful. Because if I ever came home that messed up again, I think my wife might actually rip my dick off."

"Jesus." Jayden looked at his smiling instructor with horror. "And you're still _doing_ this?"

"Yep. I know I'm scared enough to be a pretty good teacher, and you guys need a good teacher, or you'd kill yourselves. Now hand it over." Jayden surrendered.

Belasco slipped on Jayden's glasses, cocked his head, and chuckled. "Mr. Efficiency, I see. That's fine. It looks like it'll work pretty well, using an analog for real-world filing systems like that." Jayden watched, bemusedly, as Belasclo flicked his way through an invisible drawer, nodding. "Good enough," the other man finally concluded, and slid the glasses back off his face.

Jayden was genuinely a little mystified. "Okay," he admitted. "It's maybe not the best work I've ever done, but how else would you make an interface?"

Belasco hesitated. "You've been on your break for, what, almost twenty minutes now? I'll show you mine. Just stay sitting down and relax. I'm not going to give you very long in there." He described, in detail, to an increasingly perplexed Jayden, just what he should expect to see once he put on the other man's glasses.

Despite the preparation, Jayden still jerked, startled, at what faced him when he slipped them on; his cubicle instantly became a wide wall filled with a mass of papers, haphazardly pinned on top of each other with thumbtacks. On each was a clumsy child's drawing of crayon, or ink, or pencil: a house, a flower, a face, sometimes just even a mess of scribbles. He reached cautiously for one directly in front of him – it looked like it depicted a lopsided green dog – and tugged as though to free it from the wall. It exploded towards him into a large, hovering spreadsheet, and he flinched backward involuntarily at first, then squinted, realized he was looking at a list of . . . signatures. A few names, repeated in various handwriting styles. Each one had a nimbus of information surrounding it, and when he touched a spot on one of _those_ items, lightly, it jerked another drawing off the wall towards him – a sheet of black pen loops that had slightly torn the paper – which then became a web of linked photographs. Jayden was just beginning to study them when the familiar tap came at his shoulder, and he pulled the ARI off obediently, stared until Belasco came back into focus.

The instructor was smiling, holding his hand out for his glasses. "Welcome to the exciting world of investigating identity theft. Nowhere near as dashing as what you do, I know. Notice that I didn't say any of my kids were good artists, but those really are all drawings they did."

Jayden handed the foreign ARI back. "I believe you," he responded, blinking, "but how do you find _anything_ in there?"

"You haven't seen my desk, have you? That's how I organize. All very stream-of-consciousness. The ARI spoils me by giving me almost infinite space to do it in. Other people use diagrams, or pigeonholes, or bookshelves, whatever. You don't _have_ to, I'm just saying you have options."

"I _like_ my filing cabinet."

Belasco laughed. "Then keep it. We're just about done, here. I've got to go get everyone else finished off for the day."

"Wait." Jayden stopped him as Belasco began to move off. "So can I do it at home now? Last week, you said I just had to get through storing information virtually . . ."

"Well, it wasn't really a full session, today." Belasco considered him. "One more week of only using it in training," he said, and smiled a little when Jayden groaned involuntarily. "I'll let you start toying around with more evidence next week, but you're going to be _focusing_ on a different kind of assignment. Next week, if you manage to take all of your scheduled breaks without me telling you to, I'll let you use it at home afterwards."

"Will, uh. Is Luke Rogers going to be okay?"

The instructor's smile disappeared. "I hope so. I'm going to go see him as soon as I can get out of here. I'd ask if you want to come, but he usually gets confused if there's a lot of people around after one of those. I'm not sure how many more times he can do that before someone tells me I have to take his ARI back and kick him out so we don't actually give him brain damage. I keep telling him he can drop out any time he wants and nobody would lose any respect for him, but he just . . . keeps wanting to do this."

"Yeah," Jayden said. "I know how he feels."


	6. Chapter 6

Jayden passed Belasco's requirements during training the next week, and was even surprised to find himself a little grateful that they'd been imposed. He still loved the ARI; using it was still the best thing about not just his job, but his life. But he was no longer _totally_ infatuated. By the time he was able to start using it at home in the evenings, his relationship with it felt less like a honeymoon and more like a marriage, and it was easier than it might have been to cut himself off after using it for a while. He started building virtual landscapes at home – a forest, a mountainside – to make his time "inside" even better.

He was still required to go to training, and he fell into a comfortable routine with it. Other trainees disappeared and reappeared – Croyden finally got to spend most of her time at local morgues, and only popped back in on odd weekends. Rogers eventually showed back up, shared a couple of high fives with people before settling back into his old desk to try building up his tolerance again. Fisher hallucinated and panicked so badly one week that he hyperventilated until he passed out, but most of the other medical issues were minor, for a while.

Jayden began to realize that he was part of a community now. He'd never had one of those before, a community. Not really. They all gave him whatever they could, any time he needed it. Craig and Jackson spent their last required day of training teaching Jayden how to move better. As soon as he bashfully demonstrated the problems with his drunk-looking walk for them, they reacted with such hilarity that he could hear them laughing like loons even through the ARI. They steadied him; Craig literally held Jayden's waist while he walked until he mastered stability. They even helped him figure out how to look more respectable while sitting and plowing through files. Jackson started lightly smacking the back of Jayden's head every time he let his jaw relax so much he started drooling or did something else that made him look equally crazy.

Eventually, the two other men poured an excessive amount of energy into building an obstacle course in the hallway out of anything they could find – desks, wastepaper baskets, boxes of hair samples and crime scene photos – and started sending Jayden through it until he made it twice in a row without tripping or banging his knees. _Then_ they moved things around and sent him across it again and made him try to pick up all the fingerprints he could find. _Then_ they had Jayden do the same thing while they threw pens at him to see how well he could duck, until Belasco came out into the hall to see what the noise was and told them to knock it off before they hurt him. But even Belasco had to forgive them after watching Jayden navigate the mess in the hallway; the duo's frat-boy humor belied their capability. They'd successfully improved Jayden's awareness, helped him better balance the tug-of-war between ARI's demands on his brain and his body.

"He didn't feel half the pens, though," Jackson commented. "And we were nailing him pretty hard, with some of 'em."

Belasco rubbed his face in exasperation. "You shouldn't have been throwing . . . okay, fine, noted. It's still a vast improvement. You'll probably always have to be conscious about babysitting yourself while using ARI, Norman. You're just a little . . . more numb than most."

Another week, Croyden reappeared briefly to report to Belasco on her progress, was shanghaied into helping Jayden and a few others develop the ways in which they could examine bodies, both alive and dead. Later, a highly-distracted Miller passed on a little bit of how he used his ARI to scan for drugs. From other students, Jayden got information on dealing with tire prints, managing ARI's recording feature, and accessing records of various sorts. Twitchy little bee-phobic Fisher's specialty turned out to be tooth and scratch marks, and he helped Jayden rummage through a slightly unsettling box of human and animal jaws and chewed bones.

"Belasco says that as soon as Croyden comes across a body that's been chewed on, I can go with her to the morgue," Fisher said with quiet pride.

". . . that's great," Jayden congratulated him, slightly uneasily. "Good luck with that."

The list went on. Belasco began encouraging him to pick his own specialty, one that would help in his preexisting field. "You know your own work better than I do," the instructor said. "You could just focus on fingerprints, or blood, or even bodies, like Joanna. She'd be a great resource, there. You can even just focus on mapping databases onto each other, sort of juggling the way you read data from the stuff you find. Everyone has to do that a little, but we don't have an expert in it yet."

Jayden shook his head with wry frustration: "Can't I just do _all_ of it?" Belasco laughed at him in response. "What's _your_ specialty, come to think of it?"

"Teaching ARI." Jayden glared, unsure if he was being made fun of. "No, it really is the thing I'm best at. I seriously have no idea what most of you are talking about half the time, because I don't know your areas of expertise. But it turns out I sort of know how to help you guys use your tools better. I can't even explain why, it's just something I know. But you can keep dabbling, if you haven't figured out what you'd like to do yet."

Jayden happily dabbled away through more weeks of official training sessions, evenings at home toying with his new abilities. Then one week back in training, he felt a tap on his shoulder, automatically pulled off his glasses, and turned to see what the problem was – it was nowhere near time for one of his breaks. His stomach was already sinking a little, because that probably meant someone was having a medical problem and Belasco was shutting things down for the day.

But it wasn't Belasco behind him. It was Lynn Zoeller, a young woman built like a pit bull who'd just started the program two weeks ago. He'd been so preoccupied when she'd been introduced that he barely remembered her name now.

"What is it?" he asked, confused. "Is everyone okay?"

"Oh, yeah," she apologized. "Sorry. But Belasco is really busy with something and I was wondering if you could show me how to deal with getting the ARI to ignore partial fingerprints that are just copies of the complete ones in the room."

He stared at her for another ten seconds, _more_ confused. He'd gotten so used to thinking of himself as "the new guy" that he hadn't noticed when he wasn't, any more. "Sure," he stammered. "Maybe. I know how _I_ do it, but we might have different styles."

Jayden struggled his way through trying to help her until Belasco rescued him, then sat back to scratch his chin thoughtfully a little.

"Why," he asked Miller after work, as they walked out into the parking lot, "Do you think Zoeller asked _me_ for help? It's not like fingerprints are really my thing. I don't really _have_ a thing."

Miller squinted at him. "Because you're better than everyone else. Moron."

". . . not . . . really."

Miller shrugged. "Yeah, you pretty much are. I mean, you'll probably never be as good as I am at the chemical stuff, or better than Belasco at all the weird handwriting analysis he does, and it sounded like you were doing an absolute shit job of explaining things to Zoeller. But you're better at ARI than we are. Like . . . okay, listen. Ever hear about foxes and hedgehogs?"

Jayden stared at him, uncomprehending. ". . . they're animals?"

"Well, yeah. But it's a pretty good metaphor for describing how most people work. The hedgehog only knows one trick to keep itself alive: it curls into a little ball. But it does that one thing very, _very_ well, better than anything else can do it_. _The fox has a hundred tricks up its sleeve, and it doesn't do any of them perfectly, but it knows so many that it doesn't matter, it can always try another one. We're mostly hedgehogs, here. But you? You're a fox. Don't, uh. I'm not coming on to you, I'm not. But you're a _fox_."

"Yeah," Jayden agreed. "No, I get it. That sounds right. Thanks, Andy."

Miller flapped one hand at him in a don't-mention-it gesture, and Jayden had a very distracted drive home. He had a specialty now, he realized: his specialty was being a generalist. His specialty was versatility. He thought about it as he drifted off to sleep that night, and, by morning, he'd reached a decision.

Jayden didn't need to settle down and pick a topic. All he needed was more _time_. If he just had more time, he could do it all.

He crumpled up the schedule that Belasco had given him that told him how often he was _supposed_ to be wearing the ARI.

Instead, he simply began using the device whenever he was awake.

And when he thought he wouldn't get caught.


	7. Chapter 7

As more time passed, and Jayden began to near the end of his required time in training, he'd nearly convinced himself that he _was_ special, that he could simply use ARI nearly non-stop without ill effects. There were a few spectacular meltdowns in training that he knew should have terrified him, but instead only made him feel more and more as though he were living a charmed life. Stocky Agent Zoeller collapsed on a Saturday only a few weeks into her training, struggling to breathe as though she'd forgotten how. The medic kept her going with CPR until the paramedics showed up, and Belasco assured them the next week that she was fine, but had dropped out of the program, too unnerved to continue. A man named Barrett – in probably his early fifties, he was the oldest agent Jayden had seen yet in the ARI program – appeared sullenly one session, sulking in a corner by himself.

"He does counterterrorism," Miller murmured over lunch. Jayden was beginning to realize that Miller was a relentless gossip, but guiltily drank in the information anyway. "Apparently he's hot shit at dealing with bombs but can't program the ARI worth a damn, so he's incredibly slow. Word is he's back here because he sneezed blood on his partner last week."

Whether or not that particular item was true, Barrett didn't make it through to the end of the day before he vomited first his lunch, then a torrent of dark red blood into a trash can while the rest of the class looked on with horror. He vanished into medical oblivion, as well.

"Special Agent Barrett is on leave," was all Belasco would say about him the following week. Jayden licked his lips nervously and buried himself deeper into ARI so he wouldn't think about it.

He was _very_ bold about his use one Saturday morning before heading off to a session; after realizing he was out of milk, he actually just wandered through breakfast and getting dressed while putting together a virtual shopping list. It was beginning to feel as though he was daring himself to figure out what his limit was. He was _just_ sane enough to not try to wear it during the drive to training.

It was a pretty standard week, though the class population had once again shifted. Most notably, Croyden was back this week, grumbling about some new medical diagnosis problem, and Fisher was gone, another changing of the guard. Jayden had been planning to do some more work with pictures of victims' body positioning, but instead grabbed one of Fisher's clattering boxes of bones and photographs to work with for the morning. Ghoulish as it was, there was something hypnotic about dealing with those old jawbones and seeing how the teeth in them matched up to the teethmarks they left behind.

He worked contentedly in his seat, fumbling at the bones and then seeing what he could do about finding DNA traces on them, until Belasco tapped him, and Jayden was well-conditioned now to automatically jerk the shades off when he felt that familiar hand on his shoulder. He obediently put them down and started blinking in the direction of his cubicle to get it into focus.

He kept blinking.

He had no vision past vague colors. It was like his eyes had been greased over. The whole world was a blur.

"Gonna scan you," he heard. Croyden's voice; apparently she was on another one of her rounds. "Norman? Hey, are you all right?"

"Can't see," he blurted, fumbling outwards with his hands. "Help."

The world seemed to burst into a total mess of panic around him, full of violent, undifferentiated motion. Unable to make out objects, Jayden started to pant as his vision refused to return, and individual voices around him blended into a whirr of loud noise. A hand he could feel but not see suddenly curled around his ribcage, and became a new source of terror; he jerked violently away from it, and things instantly went from simply terrifying to unbearable. Invisible hands were touching him all over now, and he thrashed wildly, screaming at them to _stop it stop it stop it_.

Everything got louder and louder and louder, everything started to hurt. He couldn't move. He _howled_, could hear his own voice doing it, couldn't _stop_. His chest ached.

When he started to wake up, he couldn't remember having fallen asleep. Jayden finally managed to get his heavy eyelids opened, coughed a little. He was looking at a ceiling.

"Ah, there you are," he heard. He swiveled his eyes towards the voice. Belasco, seated, was closing a file folder that had been lying across his lap.

"What the hell." Jayden's face felt numb. "What the hell _happened_?"

"You're in the hospital, Norman. You're probably all right now, looks like there isn't permanent damage. Looks like you did too much, today. Apparently, you told Joanna you couldn't see, but you wouldn't respond to anyone after that when we asked you questions. Then you started to fall out of your chair, and when we tried to help you lie down, you reacted pretty violently."

"Oh. I couldn't _see_ you." Jayden couldn't figure out a better way to explain it, was vaguely aware that he sounded stupid.

"I was hoping we could wait and let you calm down a little on your own, but the decision of the medical personnel was to sedate you. They were concerned, and it was the fastest way to get you to the hospital."

"Fuck those guys."

". . . okay, I'm going to assume you'll be more reasonable when you wake up more. You've been here for a while. Training is over for the day, that's why I'm here. How do you feel?"

"Sleepy."

"I bet. I'm guessing you can see okay now?"

"Yeah." Jayden was having a little trouble keeping his eyes open, but things were in focus. "Much better. Can I go home now?"

"Not yet." Belasco stood. "I'll go find your doctor. We've got to run you through the scans again while you're awake."

"Fuck _you_."

". . . and I'm guessing that maybe you should stay in bed a little longer."

Eventually, Jayden passed the second round of medical exams, was cleared for release by a doctor who suggested that he stay overnight, just in case. Jayden was having none of it, refused, finished struggling clumsily back into most of his clothes and shoved his tie in his pocket, walked out of his room to see a familiar shock of red hair in the hallway. Unbelievably, Belasco had stayed to wait for him, and Jayden apologized profusely for their earlier exchange.

"No problem," the other man grinned at him. "You had your first extremely negative reaction to the ARI today, and that screws everyone up. Jackson _bit_ me once during an overload, swear to god. And you were sedated. Are _still _sedated. Come on, I'll give you a ride so you don't have to take a cab."

"Do you do this for everyone?" Jayden stumbled along gratefully in his instructor's wake as they made their way through the parking lot.

"Not usually, no. I mean, I like to at least check in after a bad session, but usually people have someone listed on their medical forms that we can call to help them get home and recover. Oh, hell." Jayden looked up to realize that the other man was staring at him in horror. "I shouldn't have said it that way. Jesus, I'm sorry, Norman, that was incredibly rude."

"Eh." Jayden hadn't even caught the unintentional dig at his lack of close contacts until Belasco pointed it out. "It's okay."

"This whole thing is a little bit my fault," Belasco said ruefully as he backed up out of his parking spot. "There's things you can do when you feel the effects start to creep up on you, or even when they hit you, to sort of brace yourself, make it more manageable. Looks like _you_ probably can't feel the bad stuff until it actually arrives; that fits the pattern of how you've been reacting to the ARI. I should have brought it up before you actually needed it, but, frankly, it's incredibly boring to talk about, and I was hoping you might not need it at all. I'll try to spend a little time having you practice coping mechanisms next week. A lot of what I do is just breathing exercises, kind of like doing meditation. Ask other people what they do, too. Now, _what_'s your address?"

Jayden fell asleep again in the car. His skinny instructor escorted him all the way up to his apartment door. They paused there as Jayden fumbled with his keys, dropped them once, swore.

Belasco cautiously picked them up for him, handed them over. "I'm a little nervous leaving you on your own, Norman. You're still sort of doped up, and I'm guessing you've been using more than you should. Because if you haven't, that's a pretty quick jump in intolerance that you showed today."

"I'll be all right." Door finally open, Jayden rubbed at his head. "Just want to get back in my own bed."

"All right. But take it easy. Take Monday off work. And _no_ ARI, not until training next week. Got to give your brain a break now." Jayden winced. "Do you need help getting food or anything? I know you haven't eaten since lunch, now."

"Nah, I've got leftovers. Thanks, Eric. I really _will _be okay. And I promise I won't put it back on. Not at all. Sorry." He wanted to apologize more, admit he'd been acting irresponsibly, managed to stop himself before he _really_ talked his way into a hole. "I'll be good," he finished lamely, and, at the moment, he even meant it.

"I know you will. Because if I think you're really screwing up, I get to hold on to your ARI when you're not in training. And if you do it _again_, I may have to ask you to leave the program. Good night, Norman."

Jayden, sulky, embarrassed, didn't quite manage to eat anything before he felt sleep dragging at him again; he barely got his shoes back off before he slumped back into bed. But he made sure the ARI glasses and glove were in their place on his nightstand before he dropped off; they were the last things he saw as his eyes closed.

He felt miserably hungover the next morning, though he couldn't determine if that was because of the experience with ARI, or whatever they'd knocked him out with, or a combination of both. Either way, he found that the feeling made him wince slightly, whenever he caught sight of the gear, the same way that getting sick on rum in college had made him unable to look at a bottle of it without gagging for a few days. It was disquieting, but it did help him keep his hands off it. Jayden had been intending to ignore Belasco and go to work Monday, but found, instead, that he actually needed the extra sleep.

He made it back in on Tuesday, fuzzy-headed, still a little the worse for wear. Miller actually scared the hell out of him by so suddenly appearing, leaning on his desk, that it was as though the man had popped into existence there.

"Everyone thinks you're dead," Miller began without preamble, while Jayden was still recoiling in surprise. "Special Agent Belasco _said_ you weren't, but we thought he was lying because he couldn't think of a good way to tell us your brain had imploded. Scared the hell out of everyone to see you bite it that hard. You feeling better?"

Jayden was still blinking. ". . . good to see you, too? It was a rough couple of days, but it's okay now."

"Coming back this Saturday? To training? You allowed?"

"I got told to come back, actually. To learn how to handle it better if . . . I mean, Jesus, I sure hope it _doesn't_ ever happen again, but I guess I need to know."

"Good, good. I'll see you there," Miller continued brusquely, glancing across Jayden's office at a colleague looking up curiously from the next desk. "I gotta run, gotta hell of a week right now." He smiled briefly as he turned to stride out again. Jayden stared after him, unsure if Miller seemed to be unusually keyed up, or if Jayden himself was still being a little slow.


	8. Chapter 8

It got harder over the course of the week to not put the ARI back on, but Jayden kept his promise; he was good. There was a flutter of applause from the other trainees as he slouched his way back on Saturday, deeply embarrassed. Miller, winking, even put two fingers in his mouth and whistled appreciatively.

Belasco shot Jayden a meaningful look and left him in his accustomed niche while the instructor got everyone else settled into their private routines and schedules. Jayden was tapping his fingers nervously against his knees, unsure as to how much freedom he had, by the time Belasco made his way over and took a seat across from him.

"All right." The instructor scratched absentmindedly at his nape while he regarded Jayden. "You have to just work with me until lunch. Not going to be a lot of fun, and I'm going to have to keep leaving to regulate everyone's breaks. But I assume you don't want to wake up in the hospital any more. If so, then this is worth your time."

It was a dry, limping morning. Jayden had never been interested, at all, in meditation or anything else that he habitually thought of as _that stupid hippie shit_, and so being coached in "centering himself" made him feel not only frustration, but ideological discomfort. Belasco jumped in and out of his chair at odd intervals, scrambling to order one trainee or another into a break from their ARI use. All through the morning, the red-headed instructor checked his own ARI constantly, needed to use it as an alarm in order to keep track of when he had to go tap another shoulder. Jayden, despite his irritation at the haphazard progress of his day, was increasingly impressed by Belasco's clockwork dedication. Some of the newer trainees were relieved after five or six minutes of use, and veterans like Miller were allowed thirty-five or more, but Belasco raced after them all without fault when they didn't ease the glasses off immediately on their own. Even with his efforts, one of the newer people in the room ended up with a violent nosebleed that had to be seen to.

Even when Belasco got enough of a break so that they were actually sitting down together, the time was deathly uninteresting, dull. Jayden quickly realized that the other man had been right; it really _was_ boring to practice breathing slowly and feel his own pulse while trying to imagine being panicked. After lunch, Belasco uploaded the schedule of the other trainees' breaks to Jayden's ARI and told him that he was allowed to program and scan evidence – as long as Jayden figured out how to manage his time so that he could speak to every other single trainee present about the personal rituals they used to recover from overexposure to ARI.

"Yep," Belasco grinned as his student groaned at the logistical problem, "Welcome to my life. It's going to be a huge pain in the ass to figure out how to talk to everyone before the session's over. It's sort of a test, to see if you can focus enough to do it, because if you can, you're probably in pretty good shape, mentally. But it's also good for you; what I've taught you really is useful for most people, but not all, and you should find out how other people cope, because one of those methods might work better for you. And, well, all right – a little bit of it is punishment, because I suspect you've been breaking schedule. Hopefully, the combination of having a bad episode and going through today's incredibly boring shit will convince you to not do that again."

Jayden obediently set up an ARI routine to alarm himself when necessary and asked, whenever he could, what other people did to deal with the problem – even the newer trainees had answers for him, more used than he was at having to cope with negative effects. Most, like Belasco, claimed they just focused on controlling their breathing. "It's like the Lamaze classes I took with my wife," one burly agent unexpectedly volunteered. Rogers gave Jayden a rueful grin as he showed off the rubber band on his left wrist that he'd begun to snap painfully against himself whenever he started to feel as though he were drifting.

"I stopped smoking by doing this," Rogers explained, a little defensively. "It makes me feel a little stupid, but I'm hoping it'll work for this, too. We'll see."

Croyden _and_ Fisher were present this week, preparing for a mutual stint at the morgue by working together through a mass of glossy photographs of corpses, arguing bitterly over pre-and post-mortem indicators. They looked at each other with mutual scowls when Jayden asked.

"You first, spaz," Croyden told Fisher.

"Belasco's advice never worked for me. But I've started washing my hands and face when it gets bad," the goggle-eyed man contributed. "That's what I do when I get up in the morning anyway, and it's kind of the same thing, waking up from a bad ARI effect. It's really helped a lot. Now, go on, Jo, show him."

Croyden reluctantly displayed her hands to Jayden; there were a few rows of scabbing half-moon marks across the heel of her left palm. "I just clench my hands really hard," she said. "I try to keep my nails short, and they can't get through the ARI glove on the right hand, but sometimes I accidentally cut up my left one a little. It helps me, though, gives me something physical to do to remind me what's real. The bigger problem for me is realizing _when_ I have to do it, because usually I just start hallucinating whole people, and sometimes it takes me a while to realize they're not there."

It was Miller's last week, and he was impatiently finishing up a personal cataloguing system Belasco had asked him to put into better shape; he shrugged at Jayden's question. "We already talked about it, really. Mostly the breathing stuff." But he had stories of what some absent ARI users did, as well: rubbing a good-luck charm, pinching an earlobe, even applying eyedrops.

"I know you haven't met Tanner," Miller added as an afterthought, "But that crazy bastard hums 'Eye of the Tiger' when he starts to lose it. I swear to god he does. People who do field work with him are going to think he's a lunatic, but it's sure better than the crying fits he used to have."

Jayden managed to face Belasco with his slight, triumphant smile by the end of the day; he'd spoken, however briefly, with every other trainee present, and entered all of their answers into a hastily-constructed database that the instructor cautiously nodded at. "Am I off the leash again?"

Belasco shook his head, raised his eyebrows a little. "You know you can never be _totally_ without restraint, Norman. Even if I don't stop you from using the ARI whenever you feel like it, the ARI itself will do it for me, and it's a _lot_ meaner than I am. If you've been thinking like that, no wonder you ended up on the floor." Jayden tried to look both embarrassed and hopeful. ". . . but, yes, you can wear it outside of training again. Instead of leaving it open-ended for you, though, I'd like to give you an assignment. I know you work with serial killers, but you're essentially a data analyst, right?" Belasco asked.

Jayden flinched a little, and tried not to look like he wanted to stab the other man in the throat. That kind of description of his usual work made him feel like he should be wearing coke-bottle glasses and a pocket protector. ". . . right. I _have _a psychology degree, you know."

Belasco ignored the correction. "Let me give me something you can do that's probably practical for you. Something useful, rather than just playing around. What do you usually do in a day?"

"Strip a file," Jayden replied, automatically.

Belasco blinked at him for a few seconds, stumped, then replied: ". . . pretend you're explaining your job to, say, your mother."

Jayden grimaced as he realized he should define departmental slang. "'I'll settle down when I find the right girl, Ma, stop asking.' That's how most of my conversations with her about my job end." Belasco grinned. "I usually have a file box full of stuff – documents, photographs, sometimes bagged physical evidence – and I enter the things I think are important into the databases where they go until everything's accounted for. That's stripping a file."

"Good." The instructor was nodding, now. "God, no wonder you wanted to do this. ARI is almost _built_ for your job. Don't do it _at_ work, not yet. But get permission to take a file home with you, and see if you can do that at home with it. Stick to your schedule. It might take a little while to get through – I'm guessing you're going to realize that you need to link and organize a lot of database accesses you haven't thought about yet, along the way. Start learning how you'd do your job with ARI."

Jayden hesitated a little. "I was sort of hoping," he admitted, "That working with ARI would let me do things that _weren't_ stripping files."

"That's fair," Belasco shrugged. "But it's a pretty good place to start getting a better sense of practical application. I'm sure you can find your own fingerprints all over your apartment, but it's not like learning how to look up things about yourself is very useful, in the long run. I'd like to see the results of you completing one file then, I guess, by next Saturday."

Jayden agreed, of course; it wasn't as though he had many options. As he'd expected, his director was highly reluctant to sign off on an entire box of sensitive materials, but finally allowed him to take what was left to categorize of the Harvey case from the eighties. He had to bring it back first thing Thursday morning. It wasn't much time, but it was better than nothing.

Despite his protest to Belasco, it was quietly thrilling not just to be using the ARI on his own time again, but to begin feeling how quick and easy it became to do what was usually a laborious process, despite Jayden's lightning-fast typing speed. There were a _lot_ of materials left in the file – Harvey claimed he'd murdered almost ninety people via various methods – and Jayden quickly realized that, with the limitations of his ARI schedule, he was going to be hard-pressed to get everything entered by Thursday. There was the added complication of struggling with unusual medical elements he was unfamiliar with: poisons and infections. He stuck dutifully, religiously, to the time limitations Belasco had set for him, but by Wednesday night, he was almost groaning aloud with his need to get it all finished before he had to return the box to the office. He raced through the materials, even allowing himself to be much more sloppy than he would have normally, guiltily promising himself he'd fix what he could later.

It felt like time was racing by. Finally, his internal alarm sounded; it was technically time for him to take off the ARI . . . but he was _almost_ done. Jayden hissed with frustration. He wouldn't have time in the morning before work, and he _had_ to take the file back then. He could push it for just five more minutes, he was sure. Just five minutes. He bared his teeth, ignored the specter of Belasco threatening to cut him off, and plunged ahead, scanning the file's remaining data at breakneck speed. It began to pile up in his interface like a bad car wreck.

Finally, Jayden managed to finish. He wasn't sure if he felt more proud of his achievement or ashamed of his self-indulgence. When he guiltily checked the ARI's clock, he was chagrined to see that those five minutes had turned into half an hour. Sighing, he pulled the glasses off, then the glove, placed them both on his coffee table. He could feel a weariness in his body that told him he badly needed rest – not just from the ARI, but from the pressures of the week. There was a dull headache pulsing behind his eyes. Scratching sleepily at his scalp, he was vaguely grateful that he could still see. He was mentally running over the open cases he had to sort through at work the next day as he began to heave himself to his feet.

He didn't make it the rest of the way.

Jayden crashed face-first into the carpet of his living room floor, startled, flailing, shocked into the awareness that his body was disastrously malfunctioning. Not only were his legs weak, uncoordinated, but his brain was refusing to tell him which direction was down.

"Oh, god," he told the carpet. "Oh, _shit_." It _had_ been too much. Too much, too soon after his last disaster. He was in trouble, and, worse, he was _alone_. There was nobody to help him up, get him to a doctor, coach him to keep breathing.

_Breathing_. He was supposed to focus on breathing. As he tried to fumble his way to all fours, Jayden could feel the adrenaline starting to shoot through his brain. He tried to shout his fear at the floor and couldn't, had difficulty understanding why. His ears told him the reason before his shaking body did: he could hear that he'd begun not just to pant, but to wheeze in terror. The sound of his thundering pulse was making it difficult even to hear that much.

It felt like he was stuck in a tailspin; he knew he needed to slow down how quickly he was gasping for air, but listening to himself wheeze with such audible distress was only making it harder to calm down. He had visions of choking to death on the floor, of giving himself a stroke. He had to do something about the panic _before_ he could get his lungs to cooperate. He racked his memory for solutions.

He tried clenching his hands into tight fists, arched his whole body into a bow. It only made his chest seize up more. He tried relaxing instead, twisting hard at the sensitive cartilage in the top whorl of his right ear, tried to concentrate on the pain it caused. It made him begin to feel lightheaded, and he gave up to fumble again at the floor. He bit one knuckle hard, rubbed his palms together. He writhed from his front to his side to his back. None of it helped. _Water_. He wanted water, and badly. The sink in his kitchenette was only fifteen feet away and three feet up. He could make it.

Jayden got himself lying on his front again, and poured all of his frightened energy into digging hard at the carpet with hands and knees. He immediately sprang forward as though he'd been booted in the rear, and flailed, successfully, to not catapult himself into the wall. He was in motion. Having something to do and somewhere to go was half of what was helping. The other half was the anticipation of what it would be like to cool down his sweating face, to feel the sensation of water that would remind him he was real.

He finished scrambling to the sink, slipping a little on the linoleum, used the countertop to haul himself to his knees, got the cold tap on, and, with one last urgent push, shoved his entire head under the faucet. It was nearly the best sensation he'd ever experienced, a close runner-up to the first time he'd worn the ARI.

The feeling, beginning on one side of his face and trickling outwards, _was_ like waking up. Like finding a way out of a nightmare. The cool water on his face was a baptism, a kiss, and it began to spread its way down through his back, all the way to the base of his spine. It curled gently around his lungs, gave him control over letting them expand and contract, stretched reassuring fingers through his pelvis, helped him stop trembling. He wasn't sure how long he stayed there, occasionally gulping water directly from the faucet, but eventually, he relaxed his way to the floor, letting the faucet run on above him, and settled his back against his kitchen cabinets. His legs were still weak, wobbly, and he was still having trouble figuring out his relationship with gravity. But he could breathe now, think. The world was settling down around him.

The relief from his fear was such that he even allowed himself a hoarse bark of laughter. Of all the advice he'd gotten, it was actually Fisher's, nervy little Fisher's, that had given him a way to cope. Fisher, who played with dead things, ran into walls, and screamed about bees.

"Way to go, spaz," Jayden whispered to his kitchen. He knew, now, what he needed: water was his friend. Hopefully, as Miller had told him, now that he understood what would happen and what he could do about it, it would never be that bad again, not ever.

By the time he'd decided to go to bed, he was able to walk there without his legs shaking.


	9. Chapter 9

As before, the negative effects of over-usage shocked Jayden into conscientiousness for the rest of the week. After returning the Harvey file on Thursday, he didn't use the ARI at all that night. On Friday, he put it on just long enough to clean up some of the most egregious oversights he'd made while rushing through the last of the documents – at least beginning to tag some of the items he'd just scanned and shoved in there without sorting in any way. His interface was hopelessly cluttered with data. It quickly became apparent that it would take him longer than he had to fix things properly, but he blew through the jumble by simply marking places he had to come back to, and shut things down for the night.

"I didn't finish," he muttered on Saturday as he handed his glasses over to Belasco. "I thought it wasn't a lot of stuff, but it was."

"Let's see what you've got." Belasco popped Jayden's glasses on, fumbled at the air for a bit while nodding cautiously, then slid them off again and handed them back over. "Yeah, it's a mess, but you know it's a mess, so I'm not too concerned. The data you actually managed to organize looks good, though. You're dealing with a lot of complex information, there, and the fact that you didn't finish tells me you were probably doing a pretty good job of keeping to your time limitations. Did you get everything scanned? Yes? How long do you think it would take you to do a decent job of cataloguing it?"

Jayden considered. "I think I could finish it this morning. Probably."

"Good, do that, then. How about this afternoon? Know what you want to choose to not specialize in today?"

Jayden gave a tiny, startled smile at the reference to his inability to settle down. The trouble he was still having with some of the medical aspects of the Harvey file were at the forefront of his mind. "Poisons? I'd like to do some work with poison."

Belasco blinked in surprise, thought for a few seconds, then scowled. "You _would_ pick now to get interested in that."

"Why? What's the problem?"

"Well, it's not like we just keep a bunch of toxic compounds around in a cardboard box the way we keep hair samples. I can barely make you all keep the classified crime scene photos where they're supposed to be, never mind substances that could actually kill someone. What you need is someone who knows how to scan for it well, and you're pretty S-O-L this week. Agent Croyden could help you with finding it on a corpse, but she's actually out on a case in California. Really, who you need is Andy Miller, and he's done with training for a while. Got anything else you want to do?"

Jayden frowned, disappointed. "I don't really know, I guess. Ballistics?"

"We're not set up well for that, either." Belasco took a deep breath and held it, thoughtfully. "You know, Norman, you really have sort of started to exhaust the possibilities of what you can do here, but you've got to keep coming back for a while, particularly after you had that bad reaction. I should probably start setting you up with field trips you can do and then report back on – like how Fisher's at the morgue today, and Spall's doing a tour of bank security systems in the DC area. Tell you what: You start working with ballistics databases and gun serial numbers this afternoon, and I'll give Agent Miller a ring, see if he's willing to set you up with something for next week with the poisons question."

Jayden was more or less satisfied with the answer. By the end of the morning, he was pleased with the way the elements of the Harvey file had been tagged, referenced, and cross-referenced, even given the gaps in his medical knowledge. It made his private world orderly again. He ate lunch with a knot of intensely curious new trainees who asked him obscure questions about ARI he struggled to answer, so caught up in his own files he couldn't think of how to translate what he did into more general terms. The remainder of the day's work was frustrating, in that it consisted mainly of numbers, and Jayden worked better with words and images. He itched to be able to handle actual bullets and gun barrels, but the numbers would have to do, for now.

The following week passed relatively uneventfully; Belasco gave him another "homework" assignment, and this time Jayden began doing intensive work with linking databases in ARI, delighted to find that its interface let him do so in ways that his usual software couldn't. He more or less stuck to his schedule, letting himself go only slightly over or under the time limits, and was rewarded by a lack of bad effects. Back at training, he waited obediently for Belasco to make his way over during the morning check-in, and held his glasses out for his work to be reviewed.

"No need," Belasco said, waving them away. "Frankly, you're far enough away from what I do now that I probably would have no idea what I was looking at. You're invested enough in your work that I trust you did as good a job as you could. Got a field trip for you, today. Still figuring out something to do with ballistics, but got you set up for some work on poison. Special Agent Andrew Miller is going to give you a hand."

"Great," Jayden enthused. "Where do I go?"

Belasco looked cautious. "How have you been the last few weeks? Any problems at home?"

Jayden hesitated for a second, and the look in Belasco's eyes told him that the hesitation had already tipped off the instructor. Jayden was going to have to confess. "I left it on a little too long and had kind of a bad night, last week," he admitted. He softened the truth a little: "When I took off the ARI, I felt fuzzy. It was hard to get around, and I panicked some. But I got through it."

"Good," Belasco congratulated him. "That's more encouraging than you might think. I'm about to send you out for a full day's work with just Andy Miller to supervise, no medic, and it's better that you've been in trouble and gotten out of it, rather than having no idea how you'd handle it. What did you do? Did the breathing help?"

". . . no," Jayden said, reluctantly. "Not at all. I had to wash my face."

"_Good_," Belasco repeated. "Don't be embarrassed, Norman. Everyone goes through it. Being embarrassed means you're less likely to ask for help when you need it, and you should always ask for help when you need it. Go hit the parking lot; Andy's meeting you out there. I don't know exactly what he's got for you today, but he sounded like he had some ideas."

Miller was yawning outside, sloppily dressed in an untucked collared shirt and jeans. He ran one hand through his dark, shower-damp hair as Jayden approached: "I could still be in bed right now if it weren't for you, Norman. Did you miss me _that_ much?" Jayden started trying to simultaneously apologize and protest, causing Miller to shake his head at him. "I can also teach you to recognize and respond to basic humor today, if you want me to. Come on, we're not going far. I've got lab access here, and we can mess around with some chemicals there." The two men fell into step together. "I seriously don't understand just what you want, though. Belasco said you needed some help with 'poison,' which is confusing and useless. _Everything's_ poisonous, in high enough doses."

"Yeah, I know, but I don't know how to figure out how much 'high enough' is of anything, or how to measure it, or . . . much at all, really. I was going through this old case, guy named Donald Harvey. He killed a bunch of people in hospitals, used morphine, arsenic, cyanide, rat poison, cleaning solutions, hepatitis injections . . . different things. I wouldn't know how to even look for that."

Miller whistled, unlocking a door. "Your job is messed up. I can't tell you anything about the hepatitis, that'd be Croyden's area. But I can help you start figuring out toxicity limits for different substances, and scanning for them."

That was what Miller _said_, and the nearly-vacant forensic labs he had access to provided a wealth of different chemical samples Jayden could theoretically practice analyzing. But in practice, the two men fumbled hopelessly through the morning; it quickly became apparent that they used their ARI in such fundamentally different ways that Miller's instructions were difficult for Jayden to apply, and Jayden struggled with explaining just why he couldn't do what he was being told to.

They broke for lunch in mutual frustration – "Wash your hands _damn_ well," Miller cautioned, "You've been handling some pretty nasty shit today." Afterward, they set aside the ARI glasses entirely; Miller theorized that focusing on talking to each other for a little, without trying to scan at the same time, would help.

"This is stupid," Miller finally said, once it became obvious that it wasn't helping at all. They were frowning at each other over a sample of arsenic-based commercial weed killer. "Just let me use your ARI for a few minutes to look at how you find stuff."

Jayden stared at him uncertainly. "Is . . . is that a good idea?"

"Kind of not, in that I could seriously screw up my head. I've hardly had mine on at all today, so I think I'd be okay in yours for a while. I've done it before with other people and not had huge problems. But it kind of is a good idea, in that it would be easier to explain things to each other, since neither of us are apparently very good at that. You know by now it's not instant death, but if you're not comfortable . . ." Miller shrugged. "I get it. Better safe than sorry, right?"

Jayden ground his teeth together, thoughtfully considering the other man. He didn't particularly want to push their luck, but then . . . he didn't want to look like a pussy, either. "Hey," he finally conceded, and handed over his glasses. "It's your brain."

"Any advice?" Miller asked, accepting them. "Anything I should know about using it?"

"I thought the reason you wanted to do this is because I was so bad at explaining it in the first place. I might have left the whole thing set in the forest, I can't remember how I shut it down before lunch."

"In a _forest_?"

"Yeah. You'll see right away if I left it open. Just tell the environment to close itself out. Then just . . . I don't know, do the usual thing. Just ask it what's around you."

Miller actually cackled aloud about three seconds later. "Jesus, you _did_ leave it in a forest," he said. "I thought you were some sort of workaholic and here you've been screwing around with _scenery_. You've spent _how_ many hours building this environment?"

"It's good practice for programming other things," Jayden said defensively. "And I'm not done with it yet. I want to see if I can figure out doing stuff with wind effects and – look, do you want to see how mine works, or not? You're gonna feel _real _stupid if you melt your brain just looking at my fake trees."

"If I melt my brain, I'll be too stupid to feel stupid," Miller retorted, but he was already grasping for the interface in front of him, invisible to Jayden. "All right, I got it. Should I just try to read the floor, or what?"

"Yeah, that'd work."

Miller spread out his gloved right hand and flashed its palm at the floor in the familiar ARI scanning gesture. He immediately jerked his head back in shock; his jaw dropped. "Holy _shit_, Norman, how many filters have you got on this thing? What the _hell_."

"What?" Jayden was slightly flummoxed. "I don't know, that's pretty much my standard setting. I don't remember how many are usually on. Why, what's wrong?"

"I'm getting footprints, and some chemical traces, and fiber matches that are linking me to clothing manufacturers, _and_ DNA samples that . . . do you just walk around scanning everything like you're doing the stress test all the time? Christ." Miller was punching at the air, swatting boxes aside. "I mean, it's not quite that intense, but this is pretty out there. How the hell do you process it all? Don't answer that, I don't really want to know. You're a madman. I guess it explains a lot, though. Okay." Miller jerked off the glasses and handed them back, rubbing at his eyes. "I assume when Belasco got you started, you were just looking for one thing at a time, right? That's what I'm going to suggest you do, if you want to do chemicals. You should put together a setting you can turn on that _just_ scans for them. I think by looking for chemical compounds _plus_ all that other shit, you're confusing your ARI and it doesn't know what to tell you first, because _everything _around you, no matter what its other qualities, also has a fundamental chemical composition that the ARI is trying to spit back at you."

Jayden was unconsciously hugging his glasses protectively to his chest. "So what would that look like? Wouldn't that give me a ton of useless data, too?"

"It can – you just –" Miller was fumbling again. "Look, do you want to see mine? It's more thorough and more specialized than you'd probably need, but it'd give you an idea."

"Yeah," Jayden responded immediately, and felt a slight flash of guilt; the idea should have given him a little more pause, but he was intensely curious, now. "Show me what you do."

Miller was already handing it to him. "You know the routine. Don't start with the arsenic right away, just sort of look around. I don't have a fake forest, so you'll just have to deal with the world as is."

Jayden nodded and took a deep breath before he put on Miller's glasses; the world faded into the grey shades that told him the device was on and ready. It was his first time using someone else's ARI to scan, and he swallowed a little, nervously, as he asked it to read the patch of floor next to him. The results that exploded around him startled him at least as much as his own settings had done to Miller, and his first thought was that Miller had been lying – Jayden _was_ in a forest. An entirely different kind, to be sure, but a maze of trees, nonetheless.

Springing up from spots on the floor around him were three-dimensional models of repeating molecular chains, reaching from around the legs of his chair to high above his head, each atom clearly, minutely, labeled. Some chains were clustered together, poking stubby little branches out towards each other, some stretched up as thin, isolated strands, the width of his own wrist. A few had puzzling bright spots of color nestled at some point along their length. Jayden couldn't remember enough chemistry to immediately recognize any of them, but the scrolling orange screens of data took care of that. He grabbed for one chain of elegant simplicity; the accompanying text told him it was glucose, its atoms bunched together like buds at the ends of its patterned twigs. He spun briefly through the information; he'd never realized there was so much to know about sugar.

"What do you think?" the grey figure of Miller asked him, as Jayden reached for another snaking string of molecules.

"This is _cool_," Jayden breathed in response. He'd grabbed something this time that turned out to be luminol, the forensic investigator's reliable friend.

"Hell, yes, it is." Miller sounded amused. "You're getting a little bit more of a show than you usually would, because you're doing it in, you know, a lab where people have spilled unusual things. It's not like the place doesn't get cleaned, but even traces will show up on the ARI. Do you see what I mean, though, about it being a specialized setting?"

"Yeah." Jayden was doing a quick read of the tabletop in front of him, now, more slender branches sprouting up from it. "Why the hell is there so much salt everywhere?"

"Because that's most of what people leave behind when they touch things. That's half of what fingerprints are made of, is salt. That should be explained in the data screen that pops up, if you look at it."

"Yeah, I can see that, now." Jayden's fingers had found the information.

"You, uh, should probably take it off now, Norman."

"Mm-hm," Jayden agreed absently, tickling at another long chain. Then he processed what Miller had actually said. "I mean, yes, you're right. Shit." He flipped the shades off hurriedly and slid them back across the table. "I think I'm going to need a little time just programming before we do any more work."

Miller nodded. "I'm going to get the stuff from this morning out again, and we can start over when you're ready."

It took a while for Jayden to structure the settings on his ARI in a way that would be useful to him; Miller waited for him with an unexpectedly generous degree of patience. The remainder of the afternoon, however, was much more productive.


	10. Chapter 10

Now that Jayden had a model to work from, he started making progress in fits and starts. His first few attempts at scanning with his new settings were amateurish, picking up one chemical or another at a time, but by the end of the day, he was confident that he understood now how to do most of what he needed on his own. He thanked Miller with sincere enthusiasm.

The stocky agent shot him a sly grin. "You're not doing anything after this, are you? I want to show you something _really_ cool. Come on, we're going to the Metro."

"I've got my car here," Jayden said, helpfully.

Miller rolled his eyes. "Just come with me. You do _not_ want to take your car, trust me."

They headed over to the Federal Triangle train station, and Miller led the way down to the blue line. Jayden was firing questions at him, hardly tracking their progress.

"How do you keep it from reading the air?" Jayden was trying to see Miller's ARI settings again in his mind's eye. "Like, telling you there's oxygen around you all the time?"

"Oh, yeah, I fucked that one up pretty bad in like the third week of training. Blacked out so fast at the overload I didn't even have enough time to hurt my brain. I've mostly got it set to look for anomalies, is how. It does still read the air, but it only tells me when there's something weird around, like chemicals from a meth lab. Hell, I guess I could find gas leaks with my ARI, if I wanted to."

They changed trains, headed east. Jayden finally interrupted his own stream of questions about the ARI to ask a different one: "Where are we going?"

"Ivy City."

". . . why the _fuck_ would we go to Ivy City? I can see muggings in my own neighborhood, if I want to." It wasn't that Jayden was _frightened_ of going there, but he couldn't imagine why they would want to head to one of the more notoriously dangerous areas of DC.

"There's a spot I know about that I think you'd like to check out," was Miller's evasive reply.

"What, like a nightclub?" Jayden vaguely remembered hearing that there were some there. "I'm not really a . . . clubbing kind of guy."

The other man snorted. "No shit. Actually, some of those clubs would be pretty interesting places to use ARI, too, especially the strip joints, but that's not what I'm thinking of."

Eventually, Miller motioned that it was time to get off the train; the two agents walked for blocks until the shorter man jerked with recognition and led the way up the steps onto the front porch of a shabby house. Strips of yellow police tape hung brightly across the porch, and Jayden followed Miller in vaulting over them and sidling through the front door and its splintered frame. The sunlight was beginning to fade, but nothing happened when Miller flicked the light switch inside.

"I forgot they would have turned the power off since I was here last," he grumbled. "That's all right. We don't really need it. This might even be better without it."

"What the hell happened in here?" Jayden wondered aloud. The place was clearly vacant, but showed apparently recent signs of both occupation and destruction. There were battered milk crates upended at odd intervals along the floor, empty food wrappers, smashed bottles, splintered boards.

"It was supposed to be a minor drug bust that turned into a meltdown. There was a lot more stuff moving through here than they thought. See that wall? Those are bullet holes. I've got a buddy in the Metro police department who tips me off whenever something interesting shows up so I can come check it out, and this place . . . well, maybe you'll see. This is something you're going to want to use my ARI for, since yours isn't set up for it, really." Miller held his glasses out, and Jayden took them, wrinkling his nose at what smelled like cat urine in the hallway. "Come on, the living room's the best."

"Best what?"

"Remember how I told you the lab was unusual because there were so many traces of different chemicals in it? This place is something else again, entirely. Take my ARI, stand in the middle of the room, and start scanning it. Just so you know, I've got it set to send up warning flags for illegal substances when it spots them. You'll see what they look like when they pop up. You'll see them _everywhere_. If you don't feel up to it, you don't have to, but . . . you should _really_ see it."

Jayden had been working fairly intensely with his own ARI all afternoon, but making it unscathed through his earlier experience with Miller's gave him confidence. Also, his curiosity was whipping him forwards, hard. "I think I'm good." Jayden stepped to the middle of the room, pulling on Miller's glasses; his view of the dim room became even darker. He popped his knuckles, cracked his neck from side to side, and grasped for the floor with his gloved hand. He'd expected the branches to spring up around him again, but not the joyful explosion of color that came with them. "Oh my _god_," he gasped, "It's _beautiful_."

". . . I would have gone with 'badass,'" Miller's amused voice trickled into his ear, "But okay." Jayden gave himself over entirely to what he was seeing.

The floor had become a mosaic of glimmering shards fit to rival anything Jayden had ever seen in a museum: shades of red, orange, gold, green, blue, purple. Most of the molecular trees around him contained a small tinted banner that matched the color of each one's origins on the floor. Jayden pulled one towards himself, grinned incredulously at what he found there, and then snatched another. The first blue one he grabbed indicated traces of a Schedule IV barbiturate, and that shining golden banner hung from a molecular chain rising up from a Schedule II swirl of cocaine. Miller had color-coded his indicators of illegal drugs, and what he'd called his "flags" now both hung in the air around Jayden and beamed from the floor in the middle of that battered room. The trees without flags indicated the more mundane elements on the floor, like the clumps of organic tracings that might be blood or urine. Without moving, Jayden flicked his gloved hand out towards the space in front of him, and it lit up, too, sprouted trees of its own. He did it _again_, slightly off towards one side, and that part of the room sprang to life. It was as though he had a magic wand, as though he were bringing springtime. Slowly, he turned, only vaguely registering the other man's presence, as Jayden transformed the entire room into a crazy riot of color. The green was everywhere, _everywhere_, and the other colors shimmered in it like jewels.

Jayden was drowning in a stained-glass window made of chemistry and shadow. He drowned forever.

Abruptly, it all disappeared; he felt the glasses being pulled from his face. The dim room started to slowly blur back into focus, and Jayden blinked at it, confused. His lungs felt like they were being squeezed. "_Shit_. Come on, Norman," he heard in his ear, and realized with shock that Miller was . . . _hugging _him, very hard.

"I, uh," Jayden stammered, and tried to push himself away. His hands didn't cooperate well.

"You hear me now? Help me out, here," came the response. "You're falling down. Come on, stand up. Can you get your legs straight?"

". . . no." As the different parts of his body started talking to his brain again, Jayden realized with growing horror that most of them felt like they were made of floppy cloth. It wasn't an affectionate embrace he was feeling; Miller's arms were just the only thing keeping Jayden off the floor. He clumsily tried to grab at the other man for support now, started to creep his hands around Miller's shoulders like unsure spiders. His heart began to pound. "_No_. _Help_."

"Okay, buddy. Okay, hang on." Miller, surprisingly strong, was shifting Jayden's torso in his arms like a sack of potatoes to get leverage. "Keep talking to me. Keep calm. What's wrong?"

"I w-w-w-" Jayden squeezed his eyes shut; his vision hadn't come back all the way, anyway, so it wasn't helping to keep them open. He tried to shift all of the tension away from his tight chest and into his legs to help hold him up. It worked, a little. "Want to wash m-m-my f-f-f-f-"

"I get you. Bathroom?" Jayden nodded, then immediately regretted it as he lost his balance in consequence. Miller hoisted him straight again. "Let's get you to the bathroom."

Miller started walking cautiously backwards, arms locked hard around Jayden's ribcage, half-dragging the taller agent who was trying to stumble slowly along forwards with him. Jayden, panting, let himself be hauled along.

"Calm down, Norman," Miller counseled, grunting as he readjusted the other man's weight again. "Slow down. Gonna sit you down on the toilet here. You gonna stay up on your own?"

He was lowering Jayden downwards to the closed lid, trying to get him braced against the tank. Jayden didn't bother to answer, but, eyes still closed, started trying to transfer his grip from Miller's shoulders to anything in arm's reach he could grab onto for stability. The trouble he was having talking was new, terrifying, and he was fighting against breaking into that frightened wheeze that he knew would make things worse.

"Oh, _shit_, of course there's no running water, they cut that off, too. Ah, _fuck_. Okay. Okay, I got it." Hands were grabbing at his ribs again, and Jayden was being hauled sideways on the toilet lid. "Hold on to the sink, here, buddy." Miller helped him drape his arms across it so he could use gravity to prop himself up. "This is gonna be a little gross, but not that bad."

There was the sound of ceramic scraping, and a thud, and then the cool relief of wet cloth being passed across Norman's face. He grabbed anxiously for it.

"Hold on," Miller's voice cautioned from above him. "You've got yourself a nosebleed. Let me clean you up a little here, and then I'll soak it again." Miller dabbed at his mouth and nose for a bit while Jayden trembled. "Shit, I wish the lights worked." Eventually, he pulled the cloth away, and put it back into Jayden's hands a few seconds later, sopping wet. Jayden spread it across his whole face, focused on the crisp sensation. Though it wasn't as much as he wanted, it still gave him back his breath, steadied him.

"Again?" Miller asked cautiously, and re-soaked the cloth for him when Jayden nodded. Finally, he peeled back his eyelids again. At first, Jayden thought he was still partially blinded, then he realized it was just dark in the small bathroom.

"I can see," he said. He made himself speak slowly, deliberately, so his mouth would cooperate. "I can see okay. Can I have a drink?"

"Uh, no, better not. I dunked my handkerchief in the toilet tank. It's _pretty_ clean water, but not drinkable. You sound like you're breathing a lot better. I want to get you out of here and go somewhere safer. Do you think you can stand up?"

"Maybe." Miller hauled up at him, but they only made it out the bathroom door before Jayden wobbled so disastrously that Miller slid him down the wall to sit on the floor.

Miller sounded like _he_ was starting to panic, now: "Shit, I'm so sorry. I shouldn't have had you spend so long in my ARI. I fucked up. I don't know what to do. How bad do you feel? I'd go get my car, but this is a bad, bad place to leave you alone like this."

Jayden was trying to figure out something he could hang onto. It took him a while to slur all the words out: "My head feels better. But nothing's working right. I've got to lie down, Andy."

"Listen, Norman. I can't just call a regular ambulance."

"I know." He let his head loll against the wall. He was struggling to coordinate talking and sitting up, never mind thinking of a solution to their situation.

"Do you want me to call Eric? Belasco? He could send someone. Or come himself."

"_No_." Jayden was instantly agitated again, now began pushing futilely at the floor to try to heave himself off it. "What we d-d-d-did is ih, ih, ih, ih, illegal." He wasn't sure if that was the word he meant, but it was close. "Can't get da-da-da-da-thrown out. Of the p-p-p-p-" He couldn't quite manage _program_ as his hands scraped at the carpet.

"Shit." Miller was grabbing at him again, got an arm snaked around Jayden's back for support. "Okay. Relax. Deep breaths. I – _shit._ Okay, one second. Just, seriously, get your fucking head together."

Jayden was changing gears once again, trying to grip the wall. "I will." It was a vague promise.

"Here." Miller had wrapped one hand around the back of Jayden's disobedient head as it bobbed on his neck, was pressing something else gently under the limp man's nostrils. "Little snort. Just a little. Like nasal spray. It'll help."

Jayden, panting again, disoriented, shut his mouth and snorted. He jerked against the wall as his illogically responding brain went through a totally new set of readjustments and

And

And then

Nothing was ever the same again.


	11. Chapter 11

In less than a minute, the confusion, the fear, and the shaking were gone – they all drained straight out of Jayden's head. He didn't even realize that a headache had been gathering until he felt it lift. It was almost as though there were a bathtub stopper at the base of his brain, and someone had yanked it out to release everything that was wrong in there, let the space fill with relief, instead. More than relief: pleasure.

"Oh," he said, and he knew even as he said it just how woefully inadequate his words were. "Oh. Oh, I _see_." A warm tingle was crackling its way along under the surface of his skin. His hands felt . . . _joyful_.

"What?" Miller still sounded a little panicked; he squeezed Jayden's shoulder. "See what? Are you seeing things?"

Jayden started to laugh. "No, but I don't have to imagine any more," he said.

"What's that? Imagine what?"

"Carruthers said, 'Imagine doing the test in a public bathroom.' And I thought, 'That would _suck_.' I guess maybe I didn't actually do that, do the test in a bathroom. But I was just _in_ a bathroom. Am I in a bathroom right now?" He squinted good-humoredly at his surroundings.

"No, it's a hallway. Can you see it?"

"I told you, I can see fine. It sure _smells_ like someone pissed in here. But I feel _really good_ about being here right now."

"Yeah, I can tell." Miller tightened his grip. "Think you can get up?"

"I think I can conquer the motherfucking world."

Miller started hoisting him upwards again. "Great. For right now, let's just focus on getting back to civilization." Jayden willingly cooperated, only stumbling a little as Miller steered him to the front door. Jayden was still having to concentrate hard on his coordination, but he was energized now, and it pleased him to treat the problem as an intriguing puzzle.

Outside, the evening had darkened further. Jayden tried to pause so he could contemplate from afar the buzzing sodium-lamp streetlight at the end of the block, but Miller shoved him towards it. Jayden stumbled again, and regarded the shorter man quizzically: "Did I just do drugs?"

"Yeah, buddy, you did." Miller was now almost dragging him towards the streetlight and the street it adjoined, dotted with convenience stores and payday loan storefronts.

Jayden thought that over for a while, moving slowly but obediently. He looked up again in fascination at the streetlight and the moths it was already attracting as the two men passed underneath it. "What kind of drugs did I do?"

"Norman, I really think we should have this conversation somewhere that's not in the middle of the street. Because you look high as _shit_ and I have drugs in my pants. Jesus, I should probably stick you in one place for a while. Come on, I'll buy you dinner and talk you down."

Jayden bared his teeth at his blurry reflection in a nearby window. "Dinner, hell," he responded. "Let's go moon the Pentagon."

"Nope, no mooning. Food." Miller said, one hand still gripping Jayden's elbow firmly. "Come on, trust me."

Miller corralled his unsteady colleague into the first diner they came across, yanking on Jayden's arm until they made it to a booth in the back by themselves.

"I feel better now," Jayden protested. "And I'm really not hungry."

"Don't care," Miller growled back as the waitress approached. "Hey, I'll have a Coke, and my friend here needs some water. Lots of water. And I guess we'll both do a burger and fries, thanks." He smiled broadly at her, then started rubbing his face tensely as she turned away.

Jayden studied his reflection again curiously in the diner window. It looked like him, but slightly _off_ in a way he couldn't put his finger on. The waitress' reappearance with their drinks startled him. He jerked away from her, then turned to examine the whole room.

"Andy," Jayden leaned all the way over the table to whisper, "We are the only white people in here. Do you feel weird about that?"

Miller widened his eyes meaningfully. "Do not talk any more until you finish that glass of water."

Jayden attacked the glass with single-minded purpose, remembering abstractly that he'd felt thirsty before. It felt good to be drinking, and he began sucking leisurely on an ice cube when he was done, trying to remember what they'd been talking about.

He leaned across the table to whisper again: "What kind of drugs did I take?"

Miller had been watching him closely. "Okay. Just keep talking that quietly. It's called triptocaine. Don't bother telling me you've never heard of it, almost nobody has. And I'm actually not sure how long that high is going to last for you, so just try to get a handle on your behavior, okay? Think of it like trying to act normally when you're in ARI."

Jayden considered this advice. It took some effort. "I want to rub the ice cubes on my face, but that would not be okay."

"Good thinking. Keep thinking like that. This place has an actual bathroom. Go use it. Get cleaned up and pull yourself together. Do I need to come with you?"

"No. No, I can do it." Jayden made it up and to the men's room, walking carefully. As he trod along, he thought of Craig and Jackson holding his waist to keep him straight, smacking the back of his head to make him not look crazy. In the restroom, he washed his face and hands, smoothed his mussed hair, straightened his tie. His face was pale, but his eyes looked wild, red-rimmed; he couldn't tell if he was actually visibly vibrating with repressed energy, or just felt like he should be. He felt keyed-up and relaxed at the same time, like he had about a thousand horsepower of speed he wanted to throw into something hedonistic, but he distantly knew that he _didn't_ want to, at the same time. He tried to cling to that.

When he got back to the table, their food had arrived. Miller looked relieved at the sight of him, and Jayden poked at his plate without appetite, started working through his second glass of water.

"So am I fired now?" Jayden curiously investigated the fry in his hand. It looked like a regular fry, but it felt _amazing_ just to look at it. It was so real, so concrete. He was vaguely aware that what he was saying was probably true, and that normally, he would have been _extremely_ pissed off about it. "They just gonna take me out back and shoot a bolt through my head when I fail my next drug test? Can I sleep on your couch when I don't have a job?"

"Jesus Christ. Keep your fucking voice down, won't you? God, you're unbearable when you're high. No, you're not gonna get fired."

"Why not? Because I _am_ high. I'd fire me." Jayden returned the fry to his plate and began picking sesame seeds off his hamburger bun.

"Norman, listen, you're not gonna get caught unless you do something incredibly stupid. Like confess. It's true I probably haven't done you any favors, but god dammit, give me _some_ credit. I wouldn't dump _that_ kind of shit on you without saying something first. Don't worry about getting tested. I mean, look, you'd never test positive for peyote, right?"

"Why the hell would I take peyote? Oh, god," Jayden stared at the other man in sudden horror. "Did you give me peyote?"

"_No_, dammit, it –" Miller had to quiet himself down, now. ". . . look, it doesn't matter. The point is that even if you _had _taken some, it's not like a standard test would catch it. They don't screen for _everything,_ it'd take forever. It's really just the biggies they look for – weed, heroin, coke, that sort of stuff. The test only catches what it's looking for, and it's not looking for triptocaine at all, because nobody's taking it to get high."

Jayden immediately changed gears, from startled panic to alert curiosity. "Why not? This is _great_. People drink Nyquil and huff spray paint for kicks, for Christ's sake. This has _got _to be better than that. I want to _always_ feel this good."

"Well, one thing is that it's hard to make and harder to find. Another is that you adjust to it pretty quick. So it's never as good as the first time; you build up a tolerance to the, uh, euphoric effects very soon. So the few people who try it only ever use it a couple of times and then find something less expensive and easier to get that feels much better."

"You just walk around with drugs on you?" Jayden wanted to know. "What else do you have?"

"I - I don't - I just walk around with triptocaine, yes. Are you sure you want to know all this _now_? _Here_? Are you even following what I'm saying?" Jayden nodded, and Miller sighed. "Okay, if it'll keep you quiet. But you have to eat something while I'm talking. If you don't put something in your stomach, you're gonna crash and burn hard when the tripto wears off."

"Can I have your pickle?"

"You've already _got_ – yeah, sure." Jayden used his fork to harpoon the dill spear off Miller's plate and began crunching his way through it, eyebrows raised attentively. "You can't keep getting high off the triptocaine over and over – like I said, your brain chemistry just adjusts to it too quickly. But you know how the ARI effects went away as soon as you took some? That always works, as far as I can tell. It sort of works as a medication for too much ARI. It's also illegal, unapproved for any medical use whatsoever, and yes, if we got caught with it, we'd get fired. And arrested. I can tell you just about anything you'd want to know about its chemical composition, but I don't really know the medicine of why it works so well."

"How many drugs did you try before you found the right one?" Jayden asked with wide-eyed wonder. He'd discovered the pickle on his own plate now, and was absentmindedly sucking on it as though it were a cigar. "Did you take a lot? Holy shit, are you a _drug addict_?"

"_Norman_," Miller hissed, "Keep it down or shut the fuck up, already. _I_ didn't figure it out. Someone else told me about it, and now I'm telling you. What I _did_ was . . . look, all right. I have some . . . some connections that have made it easier to acquire, lately. The FBI has been sort of putzing around with figuring out what to do about the ARI effects ever since the program started. There's a whole bunch of stuff they tried and gave up on. Triptocaine was the best one they found, the most promising one, but then they figured out it was more of a band-aid than anything."

"What's that mean?" Jayden had started chopping up his burger with his fork. Maybe if he got it into little pieces, it wouldn't look so intimidating.

"Well, okay. Let's say you just got shot in the foot and were all pumped full of painkillers. Doesn't fix your foot, right?"

"I've never been shot. Have you been shot?" Jayden eyed the mustard bottle thoughtfully, trying to decide if it would help.

"No. Are you listening to me?" Miller demanded. "I really don't want to have to do this twice. What did I say?"

"Painkillers don't fix anything, they cover it up."

Miller blinked at him. ". . . okay, that was better than I expected. You just don't _feel_ the damage. Taking the tripto helps you keep from feeling that you screwed up your brain, lets you run on borrowed time, but you still screwed it up. I had to beg Carruthers pretty hard to let me look at the records, but it turned out that when they tried giving it to a few agents in the program, the people taking it couldn't tell when they needed to stop. It made things worse, because they stayed in ARI until their brains turned to tapioca. You just can't use it long-term. But if you really need to push things a little further – like, uh." Miller actually looked embarrassed. "If you were, say, using ARI a little too much one day and then you had to go to training the _next_ day and you knew you were past your limit, you can use it to sort of trick your brain into temporarily rerouting things for a while so you can do it. Catches up with you real quick when you stop the tripto, though. I can help you get some, if you ever need it, but you should know that's what it does."

Miller stopped talking when the waitress approached again to provide more water. Jayden had managed a few bites of his mutilated burger, but decided that he couldn't figure out a way to make any of the rest of his meal appealing. He let the new information tick over in his brain as he sucked greedily at his refilled glass. He worked through most of it, then cocked his head at Miller. "You're a drug dealer."

Miller flushed a little bit. "I am about ten seconds away from letting you find your own way home from here, is what I am."

This struck Jayden as unbearably funny, and he had to choke down his laughter. "You're my instructor for the day, but you took me out to Ivy City, let me fry my brain, and gave me drugs. And you do liaison work with the DEA and you're a drug dealer. You are the _worst_ FBI agent I've ever met." Miller yanked his napkin out of his lap and threw it at the tabletop, beginning to rise, fuming. "Oh, _now_ who needs a lesson in basic humor? You think ditching me is going to make you a _better_ agent?"

Miller thumped back down and silently rested his face in his hands for a long beat. Jayden fidgeted restlessly, began building a tiny fort out of his uneaten fries. Eventually, Miller lifted his head. "Okay," he admitted. "I fucked up, today. You're right about that. I feel bad about it, and I'm worried about your brain, and my job, and it's making me be kind of a dick. Are you going to eat any more?" Jayden shook his head. "I won't try to make you, but you're going to feel that later. Let me get you home in one piece, all right?"

Jayden nodded. His head felt infinitely clearer than it had when they came in; he was focusing better on his own thought process, but still having trouble feeling concern about anything at all, including his near-total lack of concern. "Sure, if it'll help you unbunch your panties."

Miller looked slightly relieved; they made it out of the diner and back to the Metro with a minimum of fuss. Miller let Jayden's relaxed stroll set the pace; the lanky agent had given control of his body over to his sense of calm, and poured the energy he still had into his brain. He was so loaded with new information that he felt slightly like he was waking up from a dream: full of dazzling ideas that he wanted to write down so he wouldn't forget them, unsure as to whether they'd still sound that good when he woke up all the way.

Back on the train, he remembered to keep his voice low as he quizzed Miller further: "Hey, Andy, is it always like that for you? Finding drugs? Like that house?"

The other man managed a cautious smile. "No, that place is something special. That's probably _years_ worth of residue from different junkies and dealers using it for their own various purposes. You know the green flags everywhere? The place was almost _carpeted_ in ketamine at some point. You heard of that? Animal tranquilizer that junkies smoke up with sometimes? That's why my buddy in the Metro PD called me in; it's very strange. I have no idea why someone would need that much ketamine, or how it would get all over like that."

"You didn't show up," Jayden realized. "When I was doing the scan. You should have shown up on the ARI, because yours is set to find illegal drugs, and you had the triptocaine on you. But you didn't."

"Nope," Miller admitted. "I've sort of got it set up that way, to not detect tripto. Yeah, yeah, I know, it's shady. But if I didn't, it'd be hard to pick up anything else, especially in training. Because I'd constantly see the traces of it on me and . . . other people."

Jayden had his head together enough to get the implication. "You are _shitting_ me."

"Nope. No, I'm not."

"Everyone uses it?" Those friendly training sessions were starting to take on dark undercurrents in his memory.

"Oh, god, no. Far from it. Some people in the program, now and then. I have a pretty good sense of who does, because I . . ." Miller sighed. "I guess I sort of am what you said I am. I don't make it, but I'm the main go-between, now. I'm not proud of it, but at least I'm not some random guy who doesn't care what happens to the people who are using it. I keep track of who uses how much, and don't hand over more than I think is safe. Oh, Jesus, I sound slimy as hell, but I swear nobody's OD'd on my watch."

Jayden's heart was sinking a little. "Eric Belasco? Does he . . . ?"

"_Fuck_ no. He'd shit a brick if he knew anything about it. Hell, he might just try to get the whole program shut down."

Jayden plunged into contemplation again, and they made it back to headquarters in a silence that seemed to grow in significance. He felt clear-headed enough to drive, but Miller insisted on giving him a ride. "You don't seem high any more," Miller admitted, "But I've fucked up enough things today already that I don't want to take a chance on this. And don't be fooled; the effects of the triptocaine last much longer than you realize, because it's making you feel normal, and your brain's almost certainly screwed up enough right now that you _shouldn't_ be feeling normal."

When Miller pulled up outside Jayden's apartment building, his passenger looked over cautiously. "So what's going to happen now?" he asked.

"Up to you, really. You can turn me in if you feel like you have to; I won't try to stop you. You should think about it a little bit. Decide if you want to turn me in, or start carrying around a vial for emergencies like some people do, or pretend this never happened." Miller hesitated, then dug a half-full vial out of his left pocket and shoved it towards Jayden. "Here, I'm going to give you the rest of this. You can use it for evidence or just throw it away, if you want. Or, when the first dose wears off and you start to feel the ARI effects creep up on you, you can take a little more. Just a _little_. If you don't feel them, don't take any. In any case, don't use ARI at all, if you can help it. If you decide to finish the vial, by the time you're done with it, your brain should have put itself back together. Then you've just got to put up with the tripto shakes, but they're a lot better than not being able to walk. Or talk. Or think. Or seeing imaginary snakes come out of your toilet."

Jayden stared at the proffered vial for a minute, then wrapped his hand around it. "Okay," he agreed. "You're right, I need some time to think."

"Do whatever you want. Just . . . Norman? If you decide you have to tell someone, let me know first. I'd like to know if the axe is coming down."

Jayden shoved the vial into his own pocket and heaved himself out of the car. "Yeah, I owe you that much," he shot back towards the other man. "No matter what, we'll talk."

* * *

**A/N:** Aaaaaaaaaand . . . the title of the story makes an appearance!


	12. Chapter 12

It took two more days for Jayden to finish the vial.

He really _hadn't_ decided what he wanted to do by the time he fell asleep on the sofa in the wee hours of Sunday morning, his face bathed in light from the grainy reruns on his television. He was too distracted to do much else, too unsettled by what he'd learned. His dreams were unexpectedly vivid and unsettling, filled with molecular chains that lunged towards him like angry serpents.

A terrible noise woke him, and it took him a few seconds of pain and confusion to realize that he was making that noise; he'd moaned himself awake. It was bad. He convulsed, automatically thrusting his head over the side of the couch so his vomit would end up on the floor rather than himself, but it quickly became clear that he had nothing in there _to_ vomit. He helplessly heaved for a few seconds longer anyway. Afterwards, he gasped, trying to focus. The television was still on, and his apartment was filled with the kind of grey light that told him it was early morning. He felt wretched – not just nauseated, but aching, brittle, as though his current shaking might shatter him. He gripped the sofa hard with both hands while he worked on remembering why he was so miserable. The half-filled tube of triptocaine winked at him from the coffee table.

Jayden made it, staggering, to the bathroom, clinging grimly to walls along the way. Washing his face helped to bring things into clarity, but that frightening, jittery feeling wouldn't leave. He looked sorrowfully at his reflection – hanging on to the towel rack for balance, he looked waxy, corpselike. Was it the ARI, or the triptocaine that was still hurting him? Belasco's words popped up, unwelcome, into the back of his brain: _I got so lost in someone else's ARI once that I couldn't remember my name for __hours__. I stuttered a little for two weeks afterward._ With no one around to be ashamed in front of, Jayden whimpered a little. Weeks.

He tried taking aspirin, going back to bed, washing his face again, drinking coffee, drinking more water. None of it helped; the acidity of the coffee even made things worse for his empty stomach, and his guts started to cramp. When he surrendered and picked the triptocaine up in one sweat-slicked hand, the realization that he was giving up was already a kind of release. Terrified of overdosing, unsure of how much he should take – _just a little_, Miller had said – he gave himself the barest snort. The high was good. It was very good. But it was less important than the relief.

In half an hour, he was showered, dressed, and ravenous. He got lunch at the greasy spoon across the street, bolting his food almost without chewing, smiling a little bit at his pleasurable secret: he was still high, enchanted by the details of the world around him, but carefully, deliberately concealing it. His skill in hiding his altered condition made him feel oddly superior, and he spent the rest of the day refining his ability to do so, taking another bump of the tripto once he started again to fumble with his coordination and struggle to focus at items in the far distance. He was already learning that he wasn't good for much in those first few minutes after taking a hit; even though the intensity was much more manageable than the first time, the rush was still too overwhelming. But after those few minutes, he mused, he was _golden_.

So golden that he decided he could handle going in to work – taking public transportation, because he'd left his car in the lot again. His nerves became more and frayed over the course of the morning, as he braced himself for the ARI effects he was dreading. When a headache began to stick tiny, kittenish claws all around the circumference of his brain, he wasn't sure at first if it was actually brought on by the bad experience from Saturday, or the tension in his shoulders. But then the rows of data on his screen began to swim and blur together, and he knew the ARI wasn't done with him yet. He had to work hard to not stagger on his way to the bathroom, where he nearly tumbled into a stall and onto a toilet seat.

That first time taking it at work was terrifying; he rubbed the vial hard, _hard_ through the fabric of his jacket, wishing he'd taken the day off, instead, convinced that as soon as he got the drug to his nose, someone would kick the stall door open and simply arrest him on the spot. When he finally snorted it, the combined thrill of the tripto high and the adrenaline from the fear almost literally floored him; in his effort to stay upright and release energy, he ground his hands so hard into the metal dividers on either side that the tendons in his wrists popped audibly. It was a struggle not to vocalize his relief.

On his way back to his desk, walking almost jauntily, he abstractly realized that he should be scolding himself for what he was doing in his head: making a list of everything he needed to do to better accommodate the problem. For one thing, he'd forgotten to check his watch, so he was unsure how much time he'd spent uselessly high before coming down enough to function. For another, he really needed to try to regulate the dosage better. For yet another, he needed to spend more time practicing talking calmly while elevated. And, of course, he really needed to talk to Miller.

That phone call, from his desk, was his first real exercise in keeping his cool during a conversation. "Andy," he said, as soon as he heard the other end pick up. "Need to talk to you."

"Yeah," the other voice agreed, sounding glum. "I figured you did. Can we do it tomorrow? After work?"

Jayden mused, slowly. He was self-consciously trying to do _everything_ slowly, to make sure he was thinking through things first. "Yeah," he agreed. "Where?"

"Meet you at the Washington Monument," Miller sighed back, and Jayden had already agreed and hung up before he thought _that_ through all the way. He was _pretty_ sure that was strange, but Miller presumably had his reasons.

Jayden finished the last of the tripto that evening; when his alarm went off the following morning, he literally fell out of bed lunging for it, his muscles responding as though they were phoning in from a distant time zone. It was an unpleasant beginning to an unpleasant day; by the time he was trying to shave, with limited success, he'd figured out what Miller had meant by "the tripto shakes." For much of the rest of the day, he again had to concentrate hard on walking, talking, everything, though now it wasn't because he was occasionally high, but because his brain still wasn't quite firing on all cylinders. It wasn't as bad as he'd feared – definitely nowhere near as bad as it had been on Sunday – but still challenging. At least, he reflected grimly after lunch, re-reading a file for the nth time to make sure he was concentrating on it, the entire experience was teaching him how to be thorough.

After work, Jayden spotted Miller on a bench by the reflecting pool before he even made it all the way to the Monument. The other man was slumped low on the seat, hands jammed in his pockets, a lit cigarette dangling from one corner of his mouth; he didn't even look up as Jayden hesitantly took a seat beside him.

"Hey, Andy. Didn't know you smoked."

"I don't. Or, you know, I haven't for a couple of years. I bummed this off a tourist who asked me for directions. Little stress relief. So. What kind of a conclusion did you come to?"

"You really want to do this here? Why here?" Jayden wanted to know. "Isn't this a little . . . public?"

"Cold War nostalgia," Miller said, eyes still on the ground. "There are all those stories about KGB spies meeting their contacts on park benches on and around the Mall."

"Did anyone ever actually do that?"

Miller shrugged. "No idea. It's pretty this late in the day, though, isn't it? It looks amazing." He dropped the cigarette, crushed it out with the toe of his left shoe. "When the light's this color. You know as well as I do that sometimes public spaces are sometimes more private than private ones. Don't leave me hanging here, Norman. It's been a long couple of days for me, you know?"

Jayden hesitated, trying to be cautious with his phrasing: "I think . . . I think I'd like to start keeping some for an emergency." He shot a shy look over at his fellow agent, was surprised to see the other man visibly trembling.

"Oh, Jesus." Miller gave a shaky laugh. "I thought for sure I was here to get a death sentence. I'm just about ready to puke on my shoes, over here. Okay. Wow. Shit, I wish I had another smoke." He laughed again. The two men stared for a while at the smoldering cigarette butt on the ground for a long beat. "How are you feeling?" Miller finally continued. "You okay? Thought you might be having some trouble, after all that."

"Today was hard," Jayden admitted. "I can tell I'm not quite all there, still. But it helped a lot, I think, being able to work through the worst of it like that, with what you gave me. _Everything_ we do with the ARI is risky. It's all . . . maybe it's all a little wrong, what we do. But it's important. It's more than that; it's perfect. The problem isn't with the ARI, it's with us. I just . . . I want to be able to keep up with it. To be as good as the ARI. At least, to try."

Miller was flashing that black Irish grin again: "You can pretend you're an idealist all you want, buddy, but I've seen your fake trees. You're having _fun_ in there."

"There a reason I can't do both?" Jayden was a little flustered by the accusation, but he had to admit Miller wasn't being unfair. "How does this happen, now? Do you . . . can I . . . I don't know how to ask you about getting it."

"First off, you need to stop looking so guilty. You look _sneaky_, is what you look like. I did bring some with me, just in case. And, I hate to say it, Norman, but it's not free."

Jayden was embarrassed in turn. "No, of course. I, uh. Unless it's under five bucks, I think we have to find an ATM."

That was the beginning, but far from the end. For a while, things were perfect. Jayden chugged along through training, continuing to dip his fingers in every pie of specialization he could find, toying a little with his time limitations, learning how far he could push it, learning how to regulate the effects of the triptocaine. As Miller had predicted, the highs from the drug quickly lessened in intensity and duration, but its ability to help him deal with the ARI effects continued. He'd reached, it seemed, an equilibrium, and Belasco congratulated him every time he checked in at training.

Finally, one week, the instructor eyed him narrowly: "No field trip today, Norman. I've got to talk to you a little. Stay put while I get everyone else settled." Jayden tried not to squirm nervously in his seat as he waited, desperately wishing he'd left his tripto in the car, rather than smuggling it in, in his inside breast pocket. Finally, Belasco folded his gawky frame into another chair and addressed him seriously. "So. I think you're done here, Norman."

"I . . . what?" He was frozen. What did Belasco know? Jayden stalled: "What is it?"

"I know you're supposed to have a few weeks left, but I don't think they'll be useful to you, so it seems silly to make you do them." Jayden was blinking in a mixture of confusion and relief. Belasco was giving him a slightly confused smile of his own as he continued: "You've been _tearing_ through stuff, and I think today should be your last day here. Time to kick you out of the nest. I took the liberty this past week of talking to Carruthers and your director. From what I understand, you should be expecting to hear from them in the next couple of days about taking ARI into the field."

"Mm-hm?" Jayden was surprised into incoherence.

"I'm sorry." Belasco's eyebrows were raised now. "I . . . do you not feel ready? I thought that'd be good news, but you look like a goldfish I just threw in the piranha pool."

"It's . . . no, no, it's fine. I mean, it is good news. _Great_ news. _Awesome_." Now Jayden was tripping over himself. "_Thank_ you."

"Good. You'll do fine. Meanwhile, your job today is helping me with training. You know Connors, that big guy in the corner? Walks into things a lot? Go tap him out of his ARI, take him outside, and help him do some work with tire tracks. Don't let him get hit by a car."

Jayden tended to Connors, and another agent interested in cars – Price – and a few others, all distantly. He knew that he didn't have that magic touch of Belasco's, that ability to see how other people saw, but he did his damnedest. He could feel the debt he owed to all the other trainees, and he tried to pass it on as best he could. He was distracted because the future was teasing his brain, that possibility of doing his first field work with the ARI.

It came. Though it involved flying all the way out to Arizona, that first case was small potatoes: the killer had already been caught, and the case building against him was solid. Jayden was mostly dotting the i's and crossing the t's – running his fingers over still-preserved crime scenes, over the shattered remains of a woman's head, the last victim. She'd been kept waiting for his arrival, carefully refrigerated, and as he worked, Jayden murmured a tiny apology to her for delaying her burial. It was a minor assignment, but deeply satisfying, because it was _his_. He was polished, professional, thorough, quietly elated by his own capability, and his report was immaculate. Everyone said so.

Things got faster after that, quickly. More field work followed. As he began to be assigned to more cases, particularly more open cases, Jayden was shuttled out of his shared office space into a closet-sized room of his own so that he would have somewhere to store the growing towers of file boxes. All of that information on all that paper took up almost no space at all in his ARI, but he had to keep the physical copies around; relying only on invisible electronic data files made his director and colleagues uneasy. The boxes made the walls of the tiny office close in further, but he simply used the ARI to give himself endless, gorgeous landscapes.

Things got faster. He ended up in Florida one week, sweating through his suit, combing through DNA associated with the Daytona Beach killings. There hadn't been any confirmed victims there for a few years now, but he was getting closer to cases that were important, open, solvable. Ones where if he did things right, he could keep more people from dying. He wanted desperately to live in that kind of universe, one where he could help keep order, where he could save people. Frequently, he didn't need or use the triptocaine at all, but kept purchasing the little vials from Miller on a regular basis regardless, building up a hoard for reasons he couldn't specify, even to himself. He accumulated so many that he carefully hollowed out a wall space, stacked books in front of it; his treasure trove of drugs was just as orderly as everything else in his life.

Things got _faster_. It was the case in Oklahoma that first made everything feel like it was going so fast that Jayden was going to burn up on re-entry. He was barely briefed, ricocheted through the Oklahoma City field office, was practically dragged out to Tulsa by the scruff of his neck by a fellow agent. Everyone at the scene appeared to be quietly panicking: they were still trying to figure out just how big the scene even _was_. The first three skeletons that had been found in their shallow graves were in fairly close proximity, but now one had been dug up nearly a quarter-mile away, and important people were demanding, very loudly, to be told whether or not they were all related. Jayden hit the ground running, almost literally, picking his way through knee-high clouds of summer dust, splintered bones, tarnished jewelry, dried strips of skin. They found more corpses - _he_ found two more by himself, one of the bodies almost mummified by the heat.

The air was so dry that Jayden couldn't even calculate how badly he was sweating, as it evaporated off his body at lightning speed. The OKC field office, desperate for answers, pushed him greedily, and he guiltily sucked down the triptocaine to meet their demands. Even after he fainted in the field, was briefly hospitalized because of his dehydration, they pushed, and he gave everything he could, excited, terrified.

Ultimately, it was exhilarating, but not as important as he'd hoped. The bodies were quickly identified; all that had been found so far were women, all missing for over a decade, all with prostitution convictions on their records.

"You can tell so much about a society by who its serial killers kill," Jayden said feverishly, his lungs filled with dust, brushing a femur with his fingertips. "The successful ones pick the people nobody cares about. Prostitutes, like Jack the Ripper. The Green River Killer. Jeffrey Dahmer got lucky because nobody cared about young gay men dying in Milwaukee in the early nineties. Albert Fish killed a lot of little black girls back in the twenties and nobody cared until he killed one little white girl, and then they caught his ass."

His temporary partner twitched nervously. "So you're saying this chick was a hooker, too? Like the other ones?"

"Yeah," Jayden admitted. His sense of order was outraged. "Whoever this bastard was, he knew to kill the ones nobody would care about."

"Sheesh," the other man contributed. "Or was lucky enough to want to kill only them, I guess. Are you sure you don't want to take off your jacket? It's like ninety degrees, and you look a little shaky again."

He _felt _a little shaky, but his fascination with the slowly growing number of corpses kept him upright, even though none were recent. Someone had been very, very busy on the outskirts of Tulsa, but not for some time, apparently. Once it appeared that a pattern had been established and that none of the victims were anywhere near current, Jayden was dismissed, thanked for his efforts, told that his skills would be better deployed elsewhere. By the time he was headed back to DC, he was so destroyed that he sucked a quarter-tube of triptocaine up his nose in the airplane bathroom and barely made it to his seat before he passed out. The flight attendant who shook him awake on the otherwise-empty plane seemed genuinely concerned.

"Goodness," she said lightly. "I thought I was going to have to get a cattle prod to get you out of here. Are you all right?"

He had already automatically fumbled his identification out of his pocket and was opening it towards her, rubbing his sand-filled eyes with his other hand. "It's okay," he mumbled. "I'm with the FBI." He stumbled off the plane before either of them could comment on just how little sense his response had made.

By the time he was back in his apartment, he was barely walking, and he couldn't even tell why. It might be exhaustion, or ARI damage, or triptocaine abuse. He only knew that he needed to be in bed. God only knew how bad the damage was. Weaving unsteadily, he peeled back his wall panel, glared at what was left of his stash, groaned, and dialed Miller.

"Hey, Norman. Aren't you out of town?"

"Just got back." Their conversations on the phone were always carefully coded. "_Really_ need to see you."

". . . already? We just talked before you left. All right. I'll probably be here at work at least until six. Want me to stop by your place after that?"

"Yeah. Yes." He was having so much trouble even making it through the conversation. "I think I have to go to bed. I'm leaving the place unlocked. Just come in if I don't answer the door."

A grinding pain in his chest woke him; he curled into himself. "Muh?" he asked, too disoriented to make more sense.

"If you don't start talking to me, I'm taking you to the emergency room." Miller said. Miller's knuckles were digging into Jayden's sternum.

"S'okay. Tired."

"It's not okay. I've been trying to wake you up for five minutes. You're freezing. Can you feel your hands? Can you feel me squeezing your hands?"

He couldn't, but lied in the hopes that Miller would leave him alone: "Mm-hm. Just tired."

"You're fried, Norman. You're hurt. You hurt yourself. Jesus, what did they do to you out there?"

"Make it not hurt," Jayden whispered. Miller, and the triptocaine, made it not hurt so much.

Eventually, Jayden woke up on his own bathroom floor, hugging a pillow, shivering against the linoleum. There was a note for him: _I called in sick for you. Never again_.

He eventually found his phone, left Miller a brief message: "Thank you. Never."


	13. Chapter 13

It wasn't the last time Jayden was so damaged from a case. It was the first. After Tulsa, it was Fargo, then Milwaukee. They all felt so important when he was doing them, so urgent, that he _had_ to pour into them everything his body and brain could give. He dove into ARI, wrapped himself in blankets of data, filled himself with enough triptocaine to keep himself running.

Jayden couldn't fail to notice what was happening; after all, that was what his job was, noticing things. He was beginning to repeat a tortuous cycle. He'd get a demanding case, go on an ARI/triptocaine bender for a week or so, collapse – sometimes literally – with exhaustion in his apartment for a few days to sweat out the effects from both, then spend a few more weeks ashamed and regretful, strictly regulating his ARI usage, swearing to himself he'd never touch the tripto again. It was mind-blowing to him, sometimes, just how much he was getting away with. When his usage made him twitchy, distracted, or uncoordinated, his colleagues inevitably chalked it up to either his own personality quirks, or the mysterious side effects of the ARI program that they'd all heard dark rumors about. Even in an environment where erratic behavior was routinely investigated and corrected, it seemed that Jayden had everyone fooled about what was going on.

Everyone, of course, but Special Agent Andrew Miller. He was becoming increasingly harder to deal with, but Jayden had been noticing things about _him_, too. Jayden began putting together a picture in his mind of the other man's habits and activities. Maybe he didn't need to. But gathering information was always a good idea, even if it was just in case.

Jayden dropped by his old office to corral the last of his files. It was just before the holiday, and the place was nearly deserted.

Jim Swenson looked up at him. "Hey, stranger. Any plans for Thanksgiving?"

"Family," Jayden said shortly. "Boston. Leaving in a couple of hours." Just as soon as he finished getting some more triptocaine from Miller.

"I'm so behind I've got to come in and work on the stupid severed feet thing in the Pacific Northwest. You're lucky, getting to see your family."

". . . you're just saying that because you haven't met my family." Swenson snorted at the joke, but Jayden meant it. He checked his watch and kicked himself into a slightly higher gear so he could meet Miller on time.

This time, Jayden and Miller were meeting in the parking lot; Jayden slipped in to the passenger seat of the other man's car.

"You're really out of tripto?" Miller asked quietly.

"No," Jayden said, truthfully. He slid the half-full vial out of his pocket to prove it. "I just don't want to get caught short."

"But that's all you've got left?"

Jayden was silent for a moment. "Maybe. I'd have to check at home." It was a terrible lie.

"Hold off until next week, okay? Just cut down on your ARI use. Much as you can. Maybe even all of it. Shouldn't be hard, with the holiday and everything."

Jayden felt nervous, then irritated at himself for his own nerves. "What's wrong? Are you out?"

"No. What's wrong is that I'm not comfortable with how much I've been handing over to you."

". . . you what, now?"

"I'm serious. Either you're selling it to someone else, or you're throwing away half of it, or you're using too much. _Way_ too much. I didn't even bring any with me to give you. Not even my own emergency stuff. If you're really blowing through all the tripto you're getting from me, and you're using it because you really need it, you're so fucked up that you're gonna stroke out at a crime scene. I'm not going to help you do that."

The rush of rage that shot through Jayden's brain was immediate, and he mentally flicked through each different thing he wanted to yell in the other man's face: That he was too good at his job to be treated like some junkie. That he wasn't so stupid he hadn't noticed how much ARI and tripto he was doing. That it was worth it, and nobody else could understand just how much brilliant shit he could do when he was on a bender. And, of course, that he might not have ever heard of triptocaine if it hadn't been for Miller. He thought of all these things that would be so satisfying to shout, and filed them quietly away. Instead, he relaxed into the passenger seat, made his face calm, his eyes sleepy. "How much do _you_ use, Andy?"

"What?" Miller looked startled.

"You've appointed yourself everyone's babysitter, but who's cutting _you_ off? When you took that week off in October, you didn't have the flu. You were zonked out of your mind."

That had been a highly educated guess, but, judging by Miller's reaction, a correct one. The startled expression changed to fear. "You . . . how . . . have you been spying on me?"

"You don't even know you've got some tripto on your collar right now, do you?" That hadn't been a guess at all, that was true. Miller's hand shot up towards his throat in confusion. "You set your ARI to not look for it, and you told your brain not to look for it, and you don't even see it any more when it's right in front of your face. I bet you've had it there all day and didn't notice, and everyone thought you squirted toothpaste on yourself, because most people don't see blue stains and think, 'drugs.' But you and I know better, right?"

"Jesus, Norman."

"Are you seriously going to tell me I use more than you and expect me to believe it?" Miller was peering in his rear-view mirror and wiping frantically at his collar. "Huh, Andy?"

"I don't know," the other man finally admitted. "I haven't been keeping track very well lately."

"Yeah, I just bet."

"What are you doing, Norman?" Miller looked bewildered, hurt. "What are you saying? Are you trying to threaten me? I don't understand."

"I'm trying to say I'm insulted that, after you've seen what I can do, you think I can't handle what you can. If you think you're capable of making your own decisions about the triptocaine, at least extend that much respect to me."

"I'm not sure I _am_," Miller said, softly. "Capable, that is. I'm not sure I'm making good decisions. I'm . . . I think I'm starting to get some weird side effects. Maybe. Just because I'm screwing the pooch, though, doesn't mean I feel okay about letting you do it, too. Listen, just do me a favor. You going somewhere for Thanksgiving?"

Jayden's eyes were narrowed suspiciously, now. "Yeah. Gonna go see my folks."

"Take the time off. I mean, _really_ take it off. Eat turkey and watch football. Hell, look up an old girlfriend and get laid. I think . . . I think maybe you should spend a little time thinking about what you're doing, here. To yourself. About whether you're hurting yourself. That's what I'm going to try to do. Can we talk about this after that? Please?"

"Are you really giving me the option to say no?"

"Not really, no."

Jayden sucked at his teeth. "All right. Okay." He slammed the car door hard behind him to express his displeasure as he exited.

The flight from DC to Boston was miserable. The weather was bad, and the plane was packed. As the other passengers filed off the airplane, Jayden actually put his head between his knees, breathing deeply, before he got off. He was facing five days of not being Special Agent Norman Jayden; five days of just being Norman. His brother Brian had been sent to collect him.

"Heyyyyyy, pipsqueak," Brian grinned at him. "Ready to get your ass kicked tomorrow?"

". . . yeah," Norman replied glumly. It was no more than he'd expected.

His mother's greeting was similarly predictable; she was after him before she'd even finished her hug. "Oh, _Norman_. I'm so glad to see you. Have you been eating right? You've lost weight."

"Yeah, Ma, I'm eating." Oh, god, his accent was already thickening. By the time he got back on the plane, he was going to sound like he'd never left Southie.

"You need a girlfriend to take care of you."

"Yeah, Ma, I know."

Most of the immediate family lived close by; those who had to come in from out of town were sleeping on various guest beds, sofas, and floors. He was dismayed to find that he had to share a bedroom with his sister Sheila's two kids; at least he got the real mattress while one curled up in the trundle bed and the other crashed on the floor. Norman always had trouble talking to them – he was of the opinion that people weren't very interesting until they got to be about fourteen or so – and had already decided that he'd be a better uncle when they were older. Most of this decision involved being willing to slip them beers when they turned sixteen, because, with Sheila as their mother, they'd probably need it. He'd been counting on ARI as a way to escape the stress of being around his family, but didn't want to use it with his nephews in the room. Maybe it was just as well; with his luck, he'd OD and end up having a seizure on the front lawn, Pop spraying him down with the hose as his father had always done to the epileptic black Lab that had been the family pet years ago. They never could convince him that it wasn't helpful.

Thanksgiving Day itself was frustrating but tolerable. Norman was dwarfed by most of the other Jayden men, and some of the extended family – his sisters' wives and some cousins – were easily twice his size. He suffered through the traditional drunken half-assed football match in the field behind his folks' back yard, and did, in fact, get his ass kicked as hard as Brian had promised. While he was in infinitely better shape than anyone else present, he was hopelessly outclassed in weight, and even their barely-there rules didn't allow him to use combat training. He was pretty sure that he would have come out on top if he were allowed to punch family members in the throat. Fortunately, beyond that, he was mostly able to spend the holiday as he had spent most of his childhood: making himself so unnoticeable he virtually disappeared.

There were so many people crammed into the house that the adults filled the dining room table, the kitchen table, and a card table borrowed from the neighbors; the kids sat wherever they could find space in the living room, spilling green bean casserole on the slipcovers. His mother tried to draw him out over Thanksgiving dinner itself. "Norman's doing very well in his job now, you know," she enthused loudly to his cousin Barry, who had a "real" job, as a tinsmith. "Aren't you, Norman?"

She meant well, but he badly wanted her to shut up. There was absolutely no way to explain to his family what he was doing. He translated it into easily-understandable terms: "Yeah, Ma, I got a promotion."

"You get to actually use that gun of yours now?" Pop wanted to know.

The whole thing was like nails on a chalkboard. "I . . . it'll be more likely that I'll use it, yeah." He didn't bother to explain that, ideally, he would never have to.

He was deeply relieved when the conversation turned to Sheila's current pregnancy and cousin Robert, who hadn't shown up _again_ this year and was probably off somewhere getting blind drunk.

Thanksgiving didn't end after the dinner itself, but went on for a few more days. The family didn't get together like this very often, and Ma demanded the opportunity to spoil her grandkids. Norman, whimpering over the fact that he'd booked such a late flight back, was dragged along to the zoo, the aquarium, and about a billion other places. During the Bruins game, one of cousin Richie's toddlers climbed into Norman's lap and loudly demanded the right to stay there. Norman didn't care so much until he got peed on.

"I'm _so_ sorry_,_" Richie's wife, Sharon, whispered at him. "We're still working on the potty training." She was incredibly apologetic about it, but he still had to sit in urine-soaked pants for the rest of the game. By the end of it, walking to the car with the same toddler curled up asleep on his shoulder, he didn't even mind any more.

He minded less and less. The outings were increasingly more bearable, and his folks' house, filled with children, became manageable. There was a moment that last Sunday afternoon that was actually delightful.

Norman had his third beer in his left hand, and there was a small girl whose name or age he couldn't even remember curled up asleep against his right side, worn out by excitement and pie. Though it was embarrassing to ask at this point who she was, he was pretty sure she was one of Sean's kids – Kelly? Karen? – and she looked about seven and ridiculously content. She was also very, very sticky, he suspected that she might be drooling on him a little, and he couldn't have cared less.

It had been a while since Norman had enjoyed anything that wasn't ARI use or triptocaine, and he was, unexpectedly, enjoying this. Just listening and watching his insane, irritating family be happy with each other. Pop had had a few too many beers and was totally crapped out in his recliner, but all of the other male Jaydens and Jaydens-by-marriage were laughing and trading mock punches over the game on the TV. The women were all in the kitchen gossiping, and the kids were everywhere. _Everywhere_. There was one sleeping under the coffee table.

Maybe he _did_ need to stop and think for a while about what he was doing. To himself. He felt happy, and he wasn't even high.

"Ah, Jesus," Sean said, suddenly. "That kid is _out_. Norman, can you put her to bed? She's been sleeping on the futon in the basement."

"Yep. Yeah." He scooped her up; she snuggled into him, and after he got her down the stairs, he had to pry her fingers off his shoulders to get her on the futon. "Hey, Kelly. Go back to sleep."

"I'm Karen." She was definitely pie-sticky around the mouth and hands.

Jayden bundled her up in a sheet, shoved her gently towards the wall; he was pretty sure that there were going to be about five more kids in that bed soon, and they'd need the room. "Sorry, Karen. Go to sleep."

He had a long, thoughtful flight back to DC. Things needed to be changed.


	14. Chapter 14

The first thing waiting for him back in DC was an email from Carruthers demanding his presence. Jayden was so terrified he vomited in his office trash can before he went. He was certain that he was fucked. Miller must have ratted him out.

It took a lot of effort to sit down calmly across from Carruthers. The man's face was so desolate that it made Jayden's heart sink further.

"I'm sorry," Jayden said, wondering if he was visibly sweating. "I don't feel very well today. I'm a little out of it."

Carruthers barely responded. "These are a difficult few days for me, Norman. Special Agent Eric Belasco passed away over the holiday."

The words were so horrific they were unreal. "No," Jayden said, as though he could deny the sentence out of existence, "What? No." A thousand images passed through his brain. Some of them were memories: Belasco waiting for Jayden outside his hospital room, yelling at Craig and Jackson. Some were possibilities: Belasco seizing himself to death, vomiting blood, screaming in terror until he gave himself an aneurysm. Jayden couldn't stop seeing that wall of children's drawings that lived in Belasco's ARI. "He's always so _careful_."

Carruthers was nodding, miserable. "He was. It had nothing to do with ARI, as far as we can tell. He got hit by a car. Internal injuries. They're still figuring out exactly what happened, but it looks like it was just someone running a red light. Maybe drunk. Don't know yet."

"That's so . . . _stupid_." The meaningless of it immediately began to twist in his belly. Even when just working his desk job, Jayden knew of agents who had been killed or injured, but this was surreally unjust. "He works for the FBI and teaches all this risky shit, and he gets hit by a _car_? He needs . . . he should have been, he . . . he shouldn't be dead. He's got _kids_."

"Yeah. I think everyone pretty much feels that way. I know I do. He was a genuinely good guy. He was a good man, and this shouldn't have happened, and I don't think I can say much more than that right now." Carruthers stared down at his desk, then looked back up at Jayden. "I hate to dump that on you and ask you to leave, but I'm working on telling this to . . . pretty much everyone in the ARI program who's in DC at the moment. Look, if you need to take today off, you go do that. I'm going to give you the card for the grief counselors, okay?"

Jayden accepted the card automatically, knowing he'd never go. "Yeah. Thanks. I'll probably stay here to keep busy. Sorry, Henry, I feel like I should be handing this back to you; I can't imagine having to tell people over and over again."

Carruthers looked furious. "Do _not_," he snarled, "Try to start comforting _me_, because I will _not_ be able to do this all day if you do." Jayden flinched, and the other man sighed, composed himself. "Sorry. If you stay, people might ask you about what happened because they know you're in the program together. So you might have to do it all day, anyway. Just keep that in mind."

Jayden rose to his feet. "Yeah, thanks. Grapevine. I got it. I guess someone'll probably start up a fund for a memorial or his family or whatever?"

"Almost certainly. And Norman, you should know . . . I've already been asked to start thinking about recommendations for who should take over for him. Your name came up as someone I should talk to about the possibility."

"No," Jayden said, immediately. "I'm no good."

"I'm not asking you right now, I'm just saying that I'll probably want to talk to you sometime in the next week."

"_No_," Jayden repeated. "I can't. I'm not _careful_." He slammed his way out of Carruthers' office without bothering to explain.

He didn't go home. He would feel better being productive, and he could be more productive at work. He cut off his colleagues and the curious by snapping monosyllables at them:

"Agent Jayden, did you hear –"

"Yes."

"Do you –"

"No." It didn't matter what they'd been intending to ask; no matter what it was, he almost certainly had no interest in answering it. Five o'clock was, at first, a relief, because it meant the building began to empty out, and Jayden could work on without interruption. But after forty-five minutes, he realized he was close to wearing himself out; he'd been so rigid with frustrated tension all day that his muscles were actually aching. Going back to his empty apartment wasn't appealing, but neither was working until he fell asleep in his chair. He grabbed a few things to look over at home, and left.

He didn't even crack his briefcase when he got home, just dumped it on his kitchen counter, followed by his tie. He slumped into a chair and stared at the kitchen table for an eternity, then pulled out his ARI glasses and glove, placed them in front of him, and stared at them, too. They were eventually joined by the still half-full vial of triptocaine that he fished out of his pocket. His tiny pile of addiction stared at him sullenly. "Do it all wrong," he said to himself, softly. "Like Miller, and maybe fuck up your brain, go to jail. Die. Or do it all right, like Belasco, and die anyway."

He called Miller, who was hard to hear because of background noise. He sounded drunk when he answered: "Norman? Jesus, me and some of the guys are at the Round Robin talking about, you know. Eric. Do you want to come out with us?"

"No. I'm tired of you being my pusher. I want the name of your connection for the tripto, and if I don't get it, I'll blow you out of the water. You, and me, and whoever else is putting that shit in our brains. I'll head straight to Carruthers with all the info I have."

There was a long pause. ". . . are you _insane_?"

"Probably."

"What the fuck is _wrong_ with you? I'm on a phone in the middle of a fucking bar! Fuck off, Jackson, it's none of your fucking business. Jayden's lost his fucking mind."

"Tomorrow. Call me tomorrow with the information. I mean it." Jayden hung up while Miller was still sputtering.

Jayden wondered if he'd just burned some of those bridges forever. Maybe. Probably. It was more a question of how many. He'd miss them. It had been nice, being part of a community. It had been a little less nice once he'd realized the sorts of secrets those helpful faces were hiding.

He played with his half-full vial of tripto. He'd been working inside ARI for most of the day, and now he could feel his brain starting to curl up around the edges a little. He'd let it keep curling for a while, do a little more work; snorting the drug when it was starting to really hurt was more gratifying than simply maintaining comfort. Pain and release, pain and release. It made it feel more like the first time.

Jayden's first love had been the ARI, and it always would be. But he had a mistress now, too.

* * *

**A/N:** Bonus points if you can figure out what movie I was watching when I started writing this. It's hard to come up with names, you know.

. . . okay, I lifted Emeric Belasco (who was renamed as Eric because Emeric is a stupid name), and Fletcher, and Fisher. Fisher is the worst theft: he's played by Roddy McDowell in the movie, and I stole his entire persona for the story. Nervous dude with goggling eyes? Yep.


End file.
